Find the max-pain strike — the price where the most option value expires worthless, which the tape often gravitates toward into expiration. Enter your strikes and their open interest.
Enter the strikes you care about and their open interest (contracts). Pull OI from your broker's option chain.
| Strike | Call OI | Put OI |
|---|---|---|
A rough gravity read, not a forecast — easily overwhelmed by news or a gamma squeeze. For education, not financial advice.
Max pain is a crude gravity read. NoVo computes the real gamma-flip and 'gravity' levels off the full live option chain every 60 seconds — the dealer-positioning map that actually defines where the tape pins and breaks.
See the live dealer map →Max pain is the strike price at which the total value of all in-the-money options expiring is at its lowest — i.e. where the largest dollar amount of options expires worthless, causing the most "pain" to option buyers. The theory holds that, all else equal, price is often drawn toward this level into expiration.
For each candidate closing price, you sum the intrinsic value that would be paid out to every call and put holder (calls pay when price is above their strike, puts when it's below), weighted by open interest. The max-pain strike is the one that minimizes that total payout. Enter your strikes and their open interest above and the calculator finds it.
Max pain is a rough gravity read, not a guarantee — it works best on heavy-OI expirations and gets overwhelmed by real news or a gamma squeeze. It's one input among several. NoVo's live dealer map computes the real gravity / gamma-flip levels off the full chain every 60 seconds, which is a sharper version of the same idea — see the SPY dealer read.
The member portal — delayed dealer levels with the gamma flip and the expected-move band on SPY, QQQ and IWM, plus sectors, movers and the week’s catalysts. Dr. NoVo’s Mid-Day Tape Review every trading day and the Week Ahead on Sundays. And the NoVo Discord: live discussion and Dr. NoVo’s daily dealer-map read.
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