Most options traders open the day with the same questions. Which contracts is the market crowding into, where is open interest building, which premiums have moved hardest. You can work through option chains one instrument at a time, or read all of it on one screen.
The Options Activity dashboard on IBT-ProTrade is that screen: seven live cards, each showing the top five stock and index option contracts for its segment, filterable by expiry and by option type.
The seven cards
Each card ranks contracts by a different measure.
- Active by Contract. Most contracts traded, showing where participation is widest.
- Active by Value. Highest rupee turnover, showing where the larger money is.
- OI Gainers. Largest additions to open interest, where fresh positions are being created.
- OI Losers. Largest reductions, where positions are being dismantled.
- Price Gainers. Largest premium increases.
- Price Losers. Largest premium declines.
- Volume Gainers. Largest jumps in traded volume.
The mechanics behind each measure, and how to read premium direction against OI change, are covered in detail in the Options Screener guide. This post is about what to do with all seven at once.
Cross-confirmation: why seven cards beat one
Any single card tells you a contract is busy. It does not tell you what the activity means, and a ranking on its own is easy to over-read.
What the dashboard offers that a single list cannot is agreement. Seven independently calculated top-five lists either point the same way or they do not.
When the cards agree, the same side of the market dominates several cards at once, premiums move in one direction across the board, and fresh OI concentrates on one side. That consistency reflects a decisive, high conviction session.
When the cards disagree, the lists come back mixed, premium moves are modest, and OI churns rather than builds. That inconsistency is itself the read: it reflects a market without a settled direction, and it is a signal to be more sceptical of any single ranking on any single card.
The habit worth building is checking whether the cards corroborate each other before drawing any conclusion from one of them.
Filters
| Filter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Expiry | Switch between weekly and monthly expiries. Weekly shows the top five contracts in each segment. Monthly shows top indices as well as stocks in each segment. |
| Type | Restrict every card to calls, to puts, or view both together. |
Flipping the Type filter between calls and puts and watching how the cards rearrange is the fastest way to compare how each side of the market behaved.
A three step routine
Step 1. Read the character of the session. Check which side dominates Price Gainers and OI Gainers.
Step 2. Look for repetition. A contract or underlying that appears on several cards at once is where attention is genuinely concentrated. One appearance on one card is not much.
Step 3. Zoom in before deciding anything. Take what you have noticed to the Options Screener for the full sortable list, then to the Option Chain and Open Interest widgets for the strike wise picture, before forming any view.
Go deeper. Options Activity is the overview. The Options Screener expands any one card into a full sortable list, the Option Chain shows the strike by strike picture with premiums and Greeks, Open Interest maps the support and resistance walls, Multistrike OI tracks chosen strikes through the day, and Max Pain distils it into one expiry level.
