Positioning · Lesson 03 of 4 · Concept
Max pain
Max pain is the strike at which the combined value of expiring in-the-money options is smallest, computed across the whole chain from open interest. NIFTY’s max pain on the morning of 22 September 2026 was 23,450. The index closed that expiry at 23,329, 121 points away.
NIFTY, 22 September 2026 · max pain from premarket_dashboard, close from the chain capture
The computation
For each candidate strike, work out what every open contract on the chain would be worth if the index settled there, and add it up. The strike where that total is smallest is max pain — the settlement level at which option holders collectively receive least.
It is a property of the open interest distribution and nothing else. It moves during a session as open interest changes, and it is recomputed rather than carried forward.
The name describes holders rather than writers. At max pain, the largest rupee value of open options expires worthless, which is the mirror image of writers retaining the most premium.
What people do with it, and what this page will not
The common claim is that price is drawn towards max pain as expiry approaches, usually attributed to hedging by option writers. It is one of the most repeated claims in Indian options and one of the least tested.
On the expiry recorded here it was 121 points off: max pain 23,450 against a close of 23,329. That is a single observation and it establishes nothing in either direction — a claim about a tendency needs many expiries.
Testing it is the subject of the next lesson, which publishes the method, the sample, and what the sample can and cannot support.
Common questions
What is max pain in options?
The strike at which the combined value of expiring in-the-money options across the chain is smallest, computed from open interest. It is the settlement level at which option holders collectively receive the least.
Does the market always close at max pain?
No. On NIFTY’s 22 September 2026 expiry max pain was 23,450 and the index closed at 23,329, 121 points away.
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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.