TL;DR

Static ("naive") gamma & delta maps built from yesterday's open interest (OI) are great for pre‑market terrain mapping (where are the big strikes, possible pin areas, regime bias) but are not sufficient for intraday 0DTE trade timing because they ignore same‑day opening/closing flow.

Intraday CBOE Open–Close 10‑minute interval data lets you see actual customer positioning (Buy‑to‑Open vs Sell‑to‑Open activity) in Calls and Puts. Converting those flows to delta (via CBOE Trades/Quotes Greeks) shows how much directional risk dealers inherit in real time.

Directional Entry Rule: Focus on dominant Long Call (customer buy-to-open calls) or dominant Long Put (customer buy-to-open Puts) flow at or near the strike you're trading. These represent new directional risk customers are taking today; dealers take the other side and must hedge, creating tradeable flows.

Do not use Short Calls / Short Puts (customer sell-to-open) as primary entry signals. Those flows often reflect income trades, overwrites, spreads, or hedge monetization; they more often modulate or accelerate existing moves rather than initiate direction.

Charting price action (ICT / SMC concepts) is a proxy — a visual abstraction of order flow. Options flow, when correctly parsed, is objective transaction data. Use the chart to see where price reacts; use the flow to know why and how much dealer hedging fuel remains.

Late‑day charm & hedge decay windows plus documented end‑of‑day dealer rebalancing can produce outsized reversals or accelerations, suitable for "lotto" plays.

0. Charting and the "Naive" View of Information

The book, Nexus, by Yuval Harari describes a naive view of information that treats data points as an attempt to represent reality; when the representation is wrong, we label it misinformation (honest error) or disinformation (intentional distortion). In markets, a price chart is always a representation, never the full picture. It compresses the totality of order flow, inventory transfer, hedging, and structural constraints into a single time‑price trace.

"The naive view sees information as an attempt to represent reality… Misinformation is an honest mistake; disinformation is a deliberate lie. The naive view further believes that the solution to the problems caused by misinformation and disinformation is more information."

ICT/SMC style chart reading excels at spotting where liquidity may rest (highs/lows, FVGs, imbalance zones), useful abstractions no doubt! But without flow context you can't distinguish who is trapped, who must hedge, or how mechanical any move might become. Perhaps that's why some fair value gaps (FVGs) may be respected, while others may not. A tool called GEXStream provides a "flow ratio" that gets close, but still it does not give you a per-strike break-down of open contracts. Intraday options flow is objective: contracts traded, side, open/close, strike, expiry. When you delta‑weight that flow you move from map to a higher‑resolution terrain model that shows the sources of fuel behind price moves.

Essentially, when a market maker sells you an option, they inherit directional exposure (delta). To control risk, they buy or sell pieces of the underlying index (or futures) so their net delta is near zero ("delta neutral"). As price, volatility, and time change, they rebalance. Those hedge adjustments are flows that can push the market.

Working synthesis:

• Use ICT‑style levels to stage trades at areas where liquidity is likely concentrated.
• Use Long Call / Long Put dominance data to decide whether to engage at those levels and in which direction.
• Use short‑side (STO) flows only as context — they can accelerate or dampen the move from your entry zone but rarely define the initial directional edge.

2. Quick Greek Refresher for Intraday 0DTE Decisions

Delta = price sensitivity to underlying moves.

Gamma = rate of change of delta with price.

Charm (aka delta decay) = change in delta with the passage of time; explodes in importance into expiration.

When dealers are long gamma, their hedges sell strength / buy weakness → volatility dampening → pinning near large strikes. When short gamma, hedges chase → volatility amplification. 0DTE accelerates these dynamics because time (theta) is collapsing every minute.

3. The "Naive" Gamma / Delta Approach (Static OI Models)

3.1 What It Is

Community gamma dashboards (e.g., SpotGamma‑style, Gexbot-style, etc.) start with the previous night's open interest for each strike/expiry. They then price Greeks off current underlying & IV surface and assume dealer inventory sign (commonly: dealers short puts / long calls) to aggregate Gamma Exposure (GEX) and Estimated Dealer Delta by strike.

3.2 Why Traders Use It

• Fast morning scan of terrain: where are the big OI clusters that might pin price?
• Regime gauge: estimated market‑wide long vs short gamma.
• Reference levels: potential "gamma flip" or "zero‑gamma" inflection.

3.3 Structural Weaknesses for 0DTE

• Stale: OI frozen from prior close ignores today's opening flow (which dominates 0DTE).
• Dealer sign ambiguous: heuristics can invert intraday.
• Can't separate open vs close: you don't know if volume added new risk or flattened old.
• Spread blindness: multi‑leg structures smear gamma across strikes unseen in raw OI.
• Timing blind: no insight into when hedges rebalance (critical late‑day).

Conclusion: Use static gamma maps as context only. They frame expectations but are not trade triggers in a high‑velocity 0DTE world.

4. Intraday CBOE Open–Close 10‑Minute Interval Data

4.1 What You Get

Unlike individual equity options, where trades and quotes must be aggregated across multiple exchanges (CBOE, NYSE Arca, Nasdaq BX, etc.) to reconstruct a complete tape, SPX and SPXW options trades execute solely on CBOE. This gives CBOE a practical monopoly on the real-time SPX options data (e.g., Open-Close intervals). No need to stitch together disparate feeds.

4.2 Why It Matters for 0DTE

For every option series that trades within each 10‑minute window, the Open–Close file reports:

• Call vs Put
• Buy or Sell
• Opening or Closing
• Customer origin type (customer, professional customer, broker‑dealer, market maker)
• Contract volume

This is actual executed flow, tagged for new risk vs unwind. Today's opening flow is what dealers must hedge today. Seeing buy-to-open (BTO) vs sell-to-open (STO) intraday lets you infer the live dealer inventory changes that static OI misses.

4.3 The Four Core Buckets (Customer View → Dealer Implication)

The key: Enter directional 0DTE positions only when Long Call or Long Put customer opening flow is dominant and aligns with your price level. Treat dominant Short Call or Short Put customer opening flow as context.

• Heavy Long Call or Long Put Flow = Reversal Candidate.
• Heavy Short Call or Short Put Flow = Momentum Accelerator / Cap.
• Gamma = Target Map; Delta = Trigger.
• Charm as end-of-day (EOD) Magnet.

5. SpyGlass vs. OptionsDepth: Tool Comparison

While very few option flow tools tap into CBOE intraday 10-min interval data, two tools stand out:

• SpyGlass ($100/mo): Newer, broader symbol coverage, easy-to-view delta, multi‑panel view.
• OptionsDepth ($249/mo): SPX-focused, mature platform, pre‑market reports.

SpyGlass is a relatively new tool in the game with its intraday SPX delta data while OptionsDepth has been around since mid-2024. Both tools provide the user with a vertical bar display of customer positioning data (delta) with the ability to view historical data as well. However, SpyGlass uniquely overlays the current price (in 1min candles) and uses a 4-color legend as opposed to OptionsDepth, which simply uses red/green and left/right directions to distinguish between long calls, long puts, short calls, short puts at each strike. For this reason, SpyGlass is easier to read in quickly identifying the potential support and resistance strike prices.

SpyGlass also allows a 2x2 format, which is especially useful because you can simultaneously see directional MM gamma (w/ customer positioning delta), net MM gamma, charm, and "naive" SPY gamma/delta. Traders should not forget that SPY, which has 3x the options volume as SPX, can also play a large role in intraday price action in terms of its gamma and delta levels. One pattern that has been recognized is a tendency for price to "mean revert" to heavy delta zones on SPY.

The main advantage that OptionsDepth has over SpyGlass at the moment is that OptionsDepth provides their users with a comprehensive and formal pre-market SPX report based on the key data including price action expectations going into market open. SpyGlass takes the more informal approach of having a daily live Discord voice call where the owner talks through the data presented from the dashboard throughout the day, occasionally live streaming on YouTube for non-subscribers.

Note: I reached out to OptionsDepth for a referral link and to explore their product more but did not receive any response.

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