Where the people who sell and buy the contracts stand. Their hedging either restrains price moves or amplifies them, and it is the strongest driver within the day.
Who they are and why their positioning matters
Dealer Positioning (Dealer Positioning) is the net exposure options dealers hold after selling to and buying from the public and institutions. They do not bet on a direction. They neutralize their risk by hedging continuously in the underlying market, and the size of that hedging has become one of the largest forces in moment-to-moment liquidity.
How it is inferred
From the option chains themselves: the distribution of open interest and volume, with standard assumptions about which side dealers are on, gives an estimate of their net gamma at each level. This is the map the walls, the gamma flip point and the market regime (damping or amplifying) are built from.
Its measured effect on behavior
In a positive gamma regime they hedge against the move, so volatility fades and the edges bounce. In a negative one they hedge with the move, so it grows and slides feed on themselves. The same effect shows up daily in the size of the range and in closing behavior.
Hypothetical example
A down session crosses the gamma flip point: dealer hedging switches from buying weakness to selling it, so the range suddenly widens and small bounces fail. The news did not change. The regime did.
Common mistake
Reading it as a prophecy of direction: it is a map of reaction forces, not a forecast of where price goes. It says where a move will be accelerated and where it will be braked if price moves. The first move comes from somewhere else.
Why it is inferred, not published
Dealer books are not public. What the platform shows is an inference from open interest and how it is spread across strikes: who sold and who bought is estimated from the open interest distribution, not from a disclosure. So read it as a probability, not a certainty. Its value lies in its direction and its changes more than in its absolute number.
Where to see it on the platform
The Gamma dashboard is its full view for every symbol (walls, flip, regime), and the indicator bar summarizes its overall state for the market through the session.
The Gamma dashboard shows the inferred net positions and when dealers absorb moves and when they amplify them.
