The 10 parameters, in plain words
The intelligence grid shows ten numbers, arranged in the order a session actually gets read — five questions, asked left to right. None of them tells you what to do. Each tells you what is, and the ranges tell you when a reading is ordinary and when it is not. This article assumes nothing: every term is explained before it is used. The full methodology has the formal version.
First: read the day
01 · Regime Score (0–100)
Markets alternate between two behaviours. Some days price picks a direction and keeps it — a trend day. Most days it travels up, comes back down, crosses the same levels repeatedly and closes near where it started — a chop day. The regime score weighs the evidence (direction of the move, its persistence, how many stocks are participating) into one number.
The range: above 60, the evidence tilts up. Below 40, it tilts down. The middle band — roughly 40 to 60 — is chop territory: no side owning the day. Why it matters: the same trade behaves completely differently by regime. Selling an option on a chop day, you are paid while price goes nowhere; selling the same option on a trend day, price runs through your strike. Knowing which day you are in is the single highest-value piece of context that exists.
02 · Confidence (0–100)
The score above is built from several independent "legs" — trend evidence, momentum evidence, participation evidence. Confidence measures how much those legs agree with each other. It is not strength. A dead-quiet session where every leg says "nothing is happening" produces a middling score with high confidence — the market is confidently going nowhere.
The range: above 65, the legs point the same way and the label deserves weight. Below 45, they disagree — treat the label loosely. (This distinction trips up almost everyone; there is a whole article on it.)
Second: what options price
The next three tiles rest on one idea, so here it is once. An option's price is mostly the price of expected movement — the more the market expects the index to move, the more every option costs, the way cyclone-season insurance costs more than fair-weather insurance. That expectation, extracted back out of option prices, is called implied volatility — "implied" because nobody announces it; it is implied by what people are actually paying. India VIX is this number for NIFTY options, published by the exchange.
03 · Expected Move (± points)
A straddle is the simplest bet on movement: buy both the call and the put at the strike nearest the current price. You now profit if the index moves far enough in either direction — so the price of that pair is, almost literally, the size of move the market expects. If NIFTY is at 24,050 and the call plus put together cost ₹142, the options market has priced a move of about ±142 points between now and expiry. That is the number on this tile.
The range: we scale it for how many days remain to expiry (a ₹1,500 BANKNIFTY straddle with a month left is calmer than it sounds; a ₹142 NIFTY straddle with one day left is not) and label it Tight, Typical or Wide. Why it matters: it defines the day's scale. A 100-point move is enormous when ±60 was priced and background noise when ±200 was.
04 · IV Percentile (0–100th)
Is today's premium expensive or cheap? You cannot tell from the rupee number alone — ₹142 might be costly for this market or a bargain, depending on the era. So we line up roughly 500 past sessions (two years) by their implied volatility and ask where today ranks. That rank is the percentile. A reading of 13 means premium is cheaper today than it was on 87% of the days in the last two years.
The range: at or below the 20th percentile, premium is historically cheap. 20–60 is average. Above 60, elevated; above 80, rich — near the most expensive this market has been. Why it matters: buyers of options prefer paying cheap premium; sellers prefer collecting rich premium. This tile is the context that turns the price into a judgment.
05 · Realized vs Implied (vol points)
Implied volatility is a forecast. Realized volatility is the audit: how much the index has actually moved, measured over the last ten sessions and expressed in the same units as VIX. This tile is simply the forecast minus the audit. If VIX says 11 and the market has actually been delivering 7, the tile reads +4: options are charging for movement that is not arriving.
The range: +3 or more, options are rich against reality — sellers are being overpaid. Between −1 and +1, fairly priced. At −1 or less, the market is moving more than options charge — buyers are getting a deal. Why it matters: this gap is the entire business model of premium selling, and the entire cost problem of premium buying, in one signed number.
Third: what the day delivers
06 · Expected vs Actual (% of expected)
From VIX you can compute the move options priced for a single day (an annual 11% expectation works out to roughly 0.7% per day — about 165 NIFTY points at 24,000). This tile compares the range the index has actually traveled today against that figure, updating live as the session unfolds. Traveled 132 points against 165 expected? The tile reads 80%.
The range: 100 means the day delivered exactly what was paid for. Below 70, the day under-delivered — movement sellers were overpaid today. Above 130, the day out-ran its own pricing. Why it matters: it is the live scoreboard of the bet every option position implicitly makes.
07 · Straddle Burn (% since open)
Options are melting ice. Every hour that passes without movement, they lose a little value — that decay is what option sellers earn and option buyers pay (traders call it theta). This tile makes it visible: we note what the morning's straddle cost at the open, keep watching those exact same strikes, and show the change. If it opened at ₹147 and is now ₹142, the tile reads −4%: the day's movement almost paid for the day's decay, but not quite.
The range: below −25, decay is dominating (Burning) — a seller's session. Above +25, movement has out-run the decay (Expanding) — the buyer's rare good day. In between, the straddle is roughly paying for itself. Why it matters: this is the option seller's P&L clock and the option buyer's hurdle, updating every five minutes.
Fourth: chain structure
One more concept: open interest (OI). Every option contract that has been opened and not yet closed is "open interest" at its strike. Where OI piles up heavily, real money is positioned — and heavily-positioned strikes behave differently from empty ones.
08 · Options Pressure (0–100)
Measures which side is being built with more force today — put positioning versus call positioning, counting fresh OI, volume and price behaviour, weighted toward strikes near the current price.
The range: 40–60 is balanced flow. Above 60, put pressure dominates; below 40, call pressure does. Why it matters: trend days usually show one-sided flow and chop days usually show balance — the regime synopsis literally counts this tile as a vote for or against the day's label.
09 · Pin Risk (points to wall)
The strikes carrying the heaviest OI — we call them walls — exert a real influence near expiry: the hedging flows around large expiring positions tend to hold price near a heavy strike in the final hours. This tile shows how many points spot sits from the nearest wall, judged against how close expiry is.
The range: far from the walls or far from expiry, Pin Risk is Low — normal trading. Near a heavy wall with expiry a day or less away, it reads High: the conditions under which price tends to get "pinned." It can also read "Outside the walls" when spot has escaped the corridor entirely. Why it matters: expiry-day behaviour near a wall is its own weather system. This tile tells you when you are inside it.
Fifth: the warning light
10 · Divergence (0–100)
An index can rise while most of its own stocks fall — a handful of heavyweights doing all the lifting. The market's internals (how many stocks are participating, what options positioning is doing) either confirm the price move or quietly contradict it. This tile scores the disagreement.
The range: below 45, internals agree with price — the move is what it appears to be. At 65 or above, divergence is high: price is doing something its own market is not confirming. Why it matters: regime changes are usually preceded by internals leaving before price does. This is the tile that whispers before the label shouts.
How to actually use this
Read it as two rows. The top row is orientation — what kind of day it is, and what the options market has priced for it. The bottom row is monitoring — whether the day is delivering, how the chain is positioned, and whether the internals still agree. If ten numbers is too many on day one, start with three: Regime Score (what kind of day), Expected Move (how big is big today) and IV Percentile (is premium cheap or dear). The rest will attach themselves as the questions arise.
Every range above describes a condition, not an instruction. The grid will never tell you to buy or sell anything, because that is not what it is for. It tells you what the market is doing, so that whatever you choose to do happens with open eyes.
See what kind of day today actually was
The Pulse records every session's character — day type, streaks, regime and confidence — published after each close, free.
Keep reading
This article describes market mechanics for educational purposes. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast — conditions, never calls.