NSE Option Chain — Open Interest by Strike Open Interest ChainOpen interest tells you how many contracts are still live at a strike, and a chain is the only layout that shows all of them at once. Pick a stock, an expiry and a stored session, and this lays out every strike with calls on one side and puts on the other — open interest, what changed that day, volume, implied volatility and the last traded price — with a bar behind each figure showing the share of total open interest sitting at that strike. Alongside them each side shows the premium change for the session, and the reading that the premium change and the open-interest change produce together — long build-up, short build-up, short covering or long unwinding — the four-quadrant convention an option chain is normally read by. The max-pain strike for the expiry is marked in the chain and shown above it, and the strikes that stand out carry a short note inside the chain itself, on the call half or the put half, naming the largest blocks, the biggest build-ups and where the volume went in that session.

Open interest is the number of contracts at a strike that are still open — not yet closed out or expired. Unlike volume, which resets every day, OI accumulates, so it shows where positions are actually held rather than what merely changed hands today.

Max pain is the strike at which the total intrinsic value owed by option writers across the whole chain would be smallest if the contract settled there. It is computed from the open interest standing at every strike: calls below the settlement price and puts above it finish in the money, so each candidate strike has a total payout, and the smallest one is max pain. It describes the current open-interest picture and moves as that picture changes; it is not a prediction of where the underlying will settle.

They are the four readings of an option leg, taken from the premium change against the open-interest change in the same session. Open interest can only rise when new contracts are created and only fall when contracts are closed, so its direction says whether positions were opened or closed, and the premium direction says which side was the aggressor. Premium up with OI up is long build-up; premium down with OI up is short build-up; premium up with OI down is short covering; premium down with OI down is long unwinding.

A reading needs movement on both axes. If the premium did not change, or the open interest did not change, there is nothing to classify — labelling it anyway would be inventing a read the data does not support, so the column is left blank.

It is that strike's open interest as a share of the total open interest on its own side of the chain. A strike holding 40% of all call OI is carrying a large part of the expiry on its own, which is hard to see from raw contract counts alone.

The put/call ratio compares total put open interest against total call open interest for the expiry. Above 1 means more put OI is outstanding, below 1 more call OI. It is a description of what is open, not a signal.

No. It shows where open interest sits, what changed in the session, and the standard convention for naming that change. Max pain and the activity readings describe positions that are already open — they are not forecasts, targets or recommendations to buy or sell any security.

Yes. Every stored session for the expiry is in the session dropdown, so you can step back and see how the chain looked on any day we hold data for.