Strategy · Options / GEX
Dealer gamma decides whether a level holds or breaks. This page shows the regime live, and warns you as price walks into a wall. Our own testing said selling was the only side of the options trade worth taking; the ranked ladder that acts on that is still in build.
Powers the Dealer’s Hand strategyNet dealer gamma per name, in dollars. The sign is the whole story: positive means dealers trade against the move and the range holds; negative means they trade with it and levels give way. Index and ETF majors first, then the largest gamma names.
Scope: our study measured QQQ only. The regime reading is live for every name shown; the hit rates further down were not measured on any of them except QQQ.
The trigger the strategy actually waits for. As price walks toward the call wall or the put wall, this escalates — and it stands itself down the moment gamma turns negative, because that is exactly when walls stop holding.
When a wall goes hot in positive gamma, the desk ranks the defined-risk verticals you could sell against it — short strike at or just beyond the wall, wings bought for protection, priced off the live bid/ask mid.
A wall only matters if price gets there. Measured on QQQ, this is how often each wall was reached, and when in the session it happened.
| Wall | Touched, all days | Touched, negative gamma | Touches in the first 30 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Call wall | 52% | 60% | 73% |
| Put wall | 32% | 53% | 52% |
| Both walls held and price pinned between them on 30.6% of positive-gamma days, versus 23.1% of negative-gamma ones. | |||
Dealer’s Hand is a regime filter first and a trade second. The regime decides whether you are allowed to sell at all.
Dealers dampen the move, the range holds, and the wall is a fence. This is the only regime the strategy sells in. The measured result behind it is a put credit spread; placing the short strike at the wall, and the call-side version, are our construction and are not separately tested.
Dealers amplify the move and walls stop holding. The strategy does not sell here. It says so on the panel and shows no ladder at all rather than a tempting one.
No entry until price is actually in the trigger band. Approaching is a heads-up, not a signal. Most days never trigger, and that is the point.
Both legs, one order, limit priced off the live bid/ask mid rather than lifting the offer. Max loss is known before entry and capped by the wing.
A profit target and a stop go on with the trade, not after it. Nothing is left to be watched by hand.
0DTE positions are closed out in the last half hour. The strategy does not carry gamma risk into the bell hoping for a pin.
More consecutive losses than the strategy's own average means it stops and waits. Edges are cyclical — ride it while it works, pause when it stops, let it come back.
Proximity bands, spread width, minimum credit, position cap, session windows. Defaults ship sensible; nothing is welded shut.
Not a textbook description of gamma exposure — the measured results from our study, including the parts that argue against trading it.
Intraday, price bounced off the near-term wall 67–93% of the times it was tested. On positive-gamma days the put wall held 93–95%.
Strongly positive gamma (over +$2bn) gave a next-day move around 0.6%. Negative gamma gave about 1.0%, and twice the rate of moves past 1.5% (23% against 47%). Comparing only the extremes — beyond −$4bn against beyond +$4bn — that gap widens to about 4×.
The bounce is real but tiny, roughly 0.15–0.33%. That does not clear the spread on a bought option. Every long-option variant we tested came out negative after real costs.
Defined-risk put credit spreads on positive-gamma days: +12%, 95% win. That is the only structure with a measured number — the call-side version is untested, and so is placing the short strike at the wall.
The results are public — the recipes are not. Every strategy name is a Northtape brand; the underlying method stays proprietary and closed-source. See the full track record → and the Dealer’s Hand certificate →. Hypothetical, not a guarantee of future results, and not financial advice.