SPX Options Trading and Order Flow
Follow SPX options trades and order flow across overnight and premarket trading (Cboe's Global Trading Hours), the regular session and the curb session after the close. Market Chameleon's reports let you examine individual trades, identified multi-leg strategies and order-flow indicators, with open-interest and volatility context.
Latest completed regular session: Tuesday, November 10, 2026
- Regular-session volume: 5,161,809 SPX option contracts, about 4% below the regular session's 30-day average. Options expiring that day were 70% of regular-session volume.
- Most active option: the Nov 10 7500 put, 160,505 contracts (every trade, spread legs included).
- Largest single-leg trade by premium: 300 Dec 18 7450 puts at a price of 130.20, about $3.9M in premium, marked as sold.
- Most active spread: diagonal double put spread (Nov 20 7200 P / Nov 20 7300 P / Dec 18 7000 P / Dec 18 7100 P), 6,140 contracts counted across all legs.
What are SPX options?
SPX is the symbol commonly used for the S&P 500 Index, a benchmark of 500 leading U.S. companies. SPX options are contracts on the value of that index. They settle in cash and are European-style, so they can only be exercised at expiration.
Traders use them to express market views, manage portfolio exposure and trade volatility. When you look at a contract, start with its expiration, strike price, and whether it is a call or a put.
Sources: S&P Dow Jones Indices and Cboe SPX options.
How Market Chameleon organizes SPX options activity
Reported SPX option trades are organized into views for single contracts, identified multi-leg strategies and the day's activity. Other reports add order-flow indicators, open-interest trends and pricing across expirations.
Start with the question you want answered: where volume is concentrated, which strategies are trading, how a trade executed, or how activity relates to open positions and option prices. The reports below look at those questions from different angles.
Follow SPX options across three trading sessions
Our SPX reports follow Cboe's three sessions. Looking at them separately shows when activity happened and which contracts and strategies drew interest in each.
| Session | Normal hours (ET) | Questions to investigate |
|---|---|---|
| Overnight and premarket (Global Trading Hours) | 8:15 PM the evening before to 9:25 AM | Which contracts and strategies are active before the U.S. market opens? Where is early volume concentrated? |
| Regular | 9:30 AM to 4:15 PM | Which contracts and strategies draw the most activity? How does the mix change through the day? |
| Curb | 4:15 to 5:00 PM | What keeps trading after the stock market's close, and how does it compare with the regular session? |
The overnight session is assigned to the trading date of the regular session that follows. On a normal full trading day, PM-settled SPXW options expiring that day stop trading at 4:00 PM ET and don't trade in the curb session; shortened holiday sessions and AM-settled contracts have different cutoffs. The U.S. stock market's close and the end of regular SPX options trading are different times; holiday and expiration rules apply too - see Cboe's hours and holidays.
Find the most active SPX options
SPX Options Today answers the day's questions directly: the most active contracts, the largest trades, the 0DTE share of volume, the busiest spreads and volume by session, with available past sessions in its date picker. The Single-Leg Dashboard goes deeper into single contracts: strike, expiration, call or put, and where volume concentrates. Keep the same session when you compare results.
Examine SPX multi-leg strategies
The Multi-Leg Trades page groups identified option combinations into strategies such as vertical and calendar spreads. Looking at the legs together shows the structure behind the activity: compare strikes, expirations, prices and timing. The structure gives context; the trader's wider portfolio and purpose stay unknown. Contracts on the multi-leg pages are counted across every leg: 1,000 two-leg spreads of one contract per leg show as 2,000 contracts.
Research SPX 0DTE spread activity
Zero days to expiration (0DTE) means options that expire on the trading day you are looking at. In the Index Multi-Leg Trades Screener, pick SPX and the session, then set both "DTE Near Expiration" and "DTE Far Expiration" to 0 DTE to keep spreads whose every leg expires that day. Compare volume and trade counts, then open the legs. The screener lists spread trades of 200 or more contracts, counted across all legs.
A spread with one leg expiring that day and another later is a mixed-expiration strategy and should be read as one.
Review executions and order-flow indicators
Time and Sales shows each trade's time, price, size and where it executed against the bid and ask - the place to look into a particular print. Order Sentiment reads the flow through measures such as delta volume. Use these readings together with the trade's structure and execution: they are analytical indications and do not reveal anyone's full position.
Compare open interest with prior trading volume
Volume counts contracts traded during a period. Open interest counts contracts still outstanding after clearing and is generally published the following trading morning. Compare the latest published open interest with the one before it, and match that change to the volume of the corresponding trading day: the difference is the net change in open positions.
Use matching dates. Contracts that expired that day have no next-morning open interest to compare. More: SPX open interest trends and the OIC's explanation of open interest.
Compare implied volatility and straddle prices across expirations
Implied volatility is the volatility built into option prices; skew compares it across strikes. A straddle combines a call and a put with the same strike and expiration. An at-the-money straddle's price is a price-based benchmark for how far the index may move by expiration: for a straddle bought and held to expiration, the breakeven levels are the strike plus and minus the premium paid, before costs. SPX Options Today lists the next expirations with their volume, open interest, at-the-money implied volatility and straddle price; its "move priced" is that straddle price divided by the index level. Longer-dated contracts cover more time, so a bigger straddle price alone doesn't make an expiration expensive - compare like with like.
The SPX Option Summary shows the day's volume by session, single-leg against multi-leg trades, and floor against electronic.
A practical SPX research routine
- Pick the trading date and session you want to look at.
- Start with SPX Options Today for volume, the 0DTE share, the busiest contracts and spreads, and the expiration table.
- Use the single-leg and multi-leg views to find contracts or strategies of interest.
- Check individual trades and the order-flow readings in Time and Sales and Order Sentiment.
- For contracts that haven't expired, come back after the next open-interest update.
Follow the data times and access notes shown in each report; some reports are for Premium members. Market Chameleon provides data, not investment advice. Guide updated November 9, 2026; the numbers in the box above have their own date.