How to Read OptionsDeck's GEX Heatmap

The GEX heatmap is the single highest-information chart in OptionsDeck. Once you can read it fluently, you stop guessing where the day's range will close, why a breakout failed, why a pullback didn't continue, and why expiration weeks behave so differently from the rest of the month. This page teaches you the four-step read we use internally.

Step 1 — Find the Magnet Strike

Scan the chart vertically and identify the bar with the largest absolute height. This is the Magnet Strike: the price level where dealers carry the heaviest hedging obligation. It's the strike with the most mechanical gravity, and it's the first thing you should mark.

The Magnet Strike is not necessarily where price is. It's where price wants to be by expiration. If current spot is well below the Magnet Strike on a Friday morning and aggregate gamma is positive, expect a slow grind upward into the close. If spot is above it, expect a fade. The mechanism is the same: dealers continuously rebalance toward delta-neutral, and that rebalancing manifests as gravity around the strike where their book is largest.

Step 2 — Identify the Flip Level

OptionsDeck marks the flip level with a thin horizontal line across the heatmap. This is where cumulative net gamma crosses from negative below to positive above (or vice versa, on the rare days when the chain inverts). It's not a strike — it's a continuous price level interpolated between strikes.

The flip level changes the meaning of every other level on the chart:

• Spot above flip → Compression Regime. Dealers are net long gamma. They sell into rallies and buy into dips. Walls hold. Volatility contracts. Pinning is real. Premium-selling structures have the wind at their backs.
• Spot below flip → Expansion Regime. Dealers are net short gamma. They buy strength and sell weakness — fuel for the move. Trends extend. Realized volatility expands. Premium buyers are paid.
• Spot at flip → Inflection. The single most volatile zone on the chart. Cross-and-reject sequences are common; cross-and-hold is decisive. Wait for confirmation before fading or chasing.

Step 3 — Map the Walls

After the Magnet Strike, find the next two or three largest positive bars above spot — these are your Pin Ceilings. Then find the largest negative bars below spot — these are your Pin Floors. Pin Ceilings tend to act as resistance because dealers sell aggressively into the strike. Pin Floors act as support because dealers buy aggressively into the strike.

The strength of a wall is proportional to the height of its bar relative to neighbors. A wall that is twice the height of the next-largest in its vicinity is a dominant level. A wall that's only marginally larger than nearby strikes is weaker and more likely to be sliced through. OptionsDeck's heatmap normalizes by total surface area so the visual scale reflects actual force, not raw dollar amounts (which would make small-cap walls look weak even when they're dominant for that ticker).

Step 4 — Spot the Velocity Pockets

Between major walls you'll often find regions where two or three adjacent strikes have very small net gamma. OptionsDeck shades these as Velocity Pockets. In these zones, dealers have nothing meaningful to defend — price can travel through them quickly with no mechanical drag.

Velocity Pockets are where intraday breakouts get their fuel. When price breaks a Pin Ceiling and the next major wall is two strikes away with a Velocity Pocket in between, the move tends to extend rapidly to the next wall before slowing. The same is true on the downside through Pin Floors. Map the pockets relative to current spot, and you have a probabilistic forecast of where the next leg goes if structure breaks.

Putting the four reads together

A complete read takes about 60 seconds once you've practiced it. Look at the live SPY heatmap right now and walk through it:

1. What strike is the Magnet? Is spot above or below it?
2. Where is the flip? Is spot above or below the flip — are we in Compression or Expansion?
3. What's the nearest Pin Ceiling above spot? Nearest Pin Floor below?
4. Is there a Velocity Pocket between current spot and either wall?

Now you have a four-line read. Spot at 720, Magnet 725, in Compression, Pin Ceiling 727, Pin Floor 718, Velocity Pocket 727 → 730. This translates immediately into a thesis: into the close, gravity toward 725 dominates; rallies stop at 727 unless they punch through, in which case 730 is the next stop; dips find buyers at 718 unless we break the flip below.

When the read becomes a trade

The heatmap on its own is a forecast, not a setup. Combine the read with unusual options flow, IV regime, and chart structure — and you have a setup. OptionsDeck's AI Strategist does exactly this synthesis for you on every trade idea: it reads the live heatmap, identifies the Magnet, flip, walls, and pockets, then produces a defined-risk structure that respects all of them.

For the practical workflow of converting the read into specific trades by regime, see the GEX Trading Playbook. For the multi-signal confluence framework that combines GEX with flow and IV, see Options Flow Confluence.

A note on what the heatmap is not

The heatmap is a snapshot of accumulated positioning — it does not predict direction. It tells you where price will face mechanical resistance, where it will move freely, and where dealers' incentives lie. Direction comes from chart structure, flow, and macro. Use the heatmap to confirm or challenge your directional thesis, not to generate one from scratch. That ordering — thesis first, heatmap confirms — is the difference between traders who use GEX as an edge and traders who use it as a Rorschach test.