Positioning · Lesson 04 of 4 · Verdict
Does max pain pull price?
The claim is that an index is drawn towards its max pain strike as expiry approaches. Our per-minute chain archive currently covers one NIFTY expiry, on which max pain was 23,450 and the close was 23,329 — 121 points away. One expiry cannot answer the question, and this page states that rather than generalising from it.
MarketCue option-chain archive · method published below, sample as at 24 September 2026
The test
For each expiry, take the max pain strike at a fixed point in the session and the index level at settlement, and record the distance between them. Compare that distribution against a null: the distance between the settlement and a strike chosen without reference to open interest — the previous close, say, rounded to the nearest strike.
If max pain exerts a pull, settlements should cluster nearer to it than to the null more often than chance allows. The comparison has to control for distance at the start, because an expiry that opens near max pain will finish near it whether or not anything is pulling.
That is the whole design, and it is published here before the result rather than after it.
What we can say today: nothing
The per-minute chain capture began on 21 September 2026 and currently holds one NIFTY expiry, 22 September. On it, max pain read 23,450 in the morning and the index settled at 23,329, a distance of 121 points, or about 0.5%.
One observation is not evidence. It is not weak evidence either — with a sample of one there is no distribution to compare against, and quoting it as though it counted against the claim would be the same error as quoting a single expiry that landed on max pain as though it counted for it.
So the honest answer to the question in the title is: we do not know yet, and neither does anyone quoting the claim without a sample.
NIFTY expires weekly, so the archive gains one observation a week. This lesson will be rewritten with a result when the sample is large enough to support one, and the figure above will be replaced rather than added to. Until then it stands as a method and a disclosure.
Why publish an unanswered question
Because the claim is everywhere and the test is nowhere. Readers meet max pain as an established mechanism, usually with no sample size attached and no method stated.
Publishing the method first has one practical consequence worth naming: it fixes the test before the data arrives, so the result cannot be shaped by trying several definitions and reporting the one that worked.
Common questions
Does the market move towards max pain?
It is widely claimed and rarely tested. MarketCue’s per-minute chain archive currently covers one NIFTY expiry, on which the close finished 121 points from max pain. That is not a sample from which any answer can be drawn.
How would you test whether max pain pulls price?
Record the distance between max pain and settlement across many expiries, and compare it against the distance to a strike chosen without reference to open interest, controlling for how far apart the two were at the start of the session.
All 4 lessons in Positioning →
Written and maintained by MarketCue research · Updated 9:30 AM IST · 23 October 2026
How these figures are produced
Every price on these pages was traded on the exchange and is read from our own option-chain capture, which records the NIFTY and SENSEX chains once a minute through the session. Each page names the session its figures come from.
Figures that a model produced rather than the market — the Greeks, implied volatility — are labelled as model outputs wherever they appear, and never presented beside traded prices without saying which is which. The pricing is checked against published reference values on every change.
Where our own data cannot support a claim, the page says so instead of generalising. MarketCue is not a registered investment adviser, research analyst or broker under SEBI regulations.