How to read DaySwingTrader
Every label the site can show you, in plain language — and what each one implies about the stock, not the option contract.
One card, five questions
Every card answers the same five things, in this order:
Point 4 is the one people misread most. It is about the stock, not the option. Someone writing puts wants the stock to hold up — that is bullish for the stock, even though they sold an option.
What kind of trade it was
- Sweep
- One order filled fast across several price levels at once. Someone wanted in now and did not wait for a better price. Urgency is the signal.
- Accumulation
- Not one order — many prints on the same contract in a short window, leaning the same way. Slower and more deliberate than a sweep.
- Block
- A single large negotiated trade. Note: this is our word for a big print. It is not the ₹25-crore exchange "block deal" you see in the news — different thing entirely.
- OI Spike
- Open interest jumped sharply on a contract. This one has no tape — we see the position change, not the individual trades, so there is no bid/ask evidence behind it. Treat it as weaker than a sweep.
- IV Spike
- Implied volatility on a contract moved sharply — the market repriced how much it expects the underlying to move.
What the trade did
These come from two things together: which side was urgent (did they pay the ask, or hit the bid?) and whether open interest rose or fell (was a position opened, or closed?).
| Label | What happened | For the stock |
|---|---|---|
| Call Buying | Bought calls at the ask. If open interest is rising too, it is a new long position; if OI is flat or not yet readable we still say "Buying", because the action is certain even when the position claim is not | Bullish |
| Put Buying | Bought puts at the ask — same rule as above | Bearish |
| Call Writing | Sold calls at the bid and open interest rose — a new short call, collecting premium. We only say "Writing" when the OI backs it | Bearish |
| Put Writing | Sold puts at the bid and OI rose — a new short put | Bullish |
| Call Short Covering | Bought calls at the ask, OI falling — closing an existing short | Bullish, but it is an exit |
| Put Short Covering | Bought puts at the ask, OI falling — closing an existing short put | Bearish, but it is an exit |
| Call Long Exit | Sold calls at the bid, OI falling — someone cashing out a long | Mildly bearish |
| Put Long Exit | Sold puts at the bid, OI falling — cashing out a long put | Mildly bullish |
| Call / Put Selling | Sold at the bid, but OI is flat or unknown — so we will not claim it was a new short | Action only, no position claim |
| … Direction Unclear | The trade filled between bid and ask. The tape genuinely cannot say which side was urgent | We do not guess |
| … (OI falling today — possible buy-to-close) | Bought at the ask while the day's OI is falling. Might be closing a short — we hedge rather than assert | Deliberately uncertain |
Why "Direction Unclear" exists. If a trade prints exactly between the bid and the ask, nobody lifted the offer and nobody hit the bid. We could guess. We would rather tell you we do not know — a guess that reads as confident is worse than an honest blank.
What it means for that price level
On accumulation cards you will also see a structure word. It describes what repeated activity at that strike suggests about the level itself. These appear as "Bullish Breakout Accumulation", "Bearish ITM Call Writing", and so on.
- Breakout Accumulation
- Repeated call buying at a strike above the current price. Someone is paying up for the stock to break through that level.
- Breakdown Accumulation
- Repeated put buying at a strike below the price — positioning for a fall through it.
- Resistance Accumulation
- Repeated call writing at a strike above the price. Writers are betting it will not get there — they are defending it as a ceiling.
- Support Accumulation
- Repeated put writing at a strike below the price — defending it as a floor.
- ITM Call Buying · ITM Put Buying · ITM Call Writing · ITM Put Writing
- The same activity, but the strike is already in the money. We say ITM instead of "resistance" or "breakout", because a level the price has already passed is not a ceiling or a floor any more.
- Call / Put Position Unwind
- The accumulation is people leaving positions, not building them.
- Call / Put Accumulation
- Repeated activity we can see, without enough evidence to make a structure claim. The plain version.
The score, and what it is not
The 0–100 score measures how good the evidence is — not how likely the trade is to make money. A perfect score means the tape and the open interest agree cleanly. It is not a prediction.
Strongest at the top, weakest at the bottom — the band is shown on every card, so you never have to work it out yourself. Every point traces to a stated reason on that card. If you disagree with a reason, you should discount the score — that is the point of showing them.
A real card, start to finish
A reader wrote in with a fair question: the card said bullish, so why did the call chart fall? Working through that exact trade teaches most of what matters on this site — and the answer is in the second leg.
14 August 2026, 09:15. Two prints landed on the same NIFTY strike, twelve seconds apart:
| TIME | CONTRACT | WHAT HAPPENED | SIZE | PRICE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09:15:11 | NIFTY 24350 PUT | Sold — hitting the bid | ₹1.71 Cr | ₹81.50 |
| 09:15:23 | NIFTY 24350 CALL | Bought — lifting the offer | ₹1.78 Cr | ₹119.70 |
Long the call, short the put, same strike. That shape is a synthetic long — it behaves like being long NIFTY itself. Hence the BULLISH label: it describes a view on NIFTY.
What actually happened next
NIFTY opened around 24,389, dipped to 24,346, and closed at 24,424 — up about 0.14%. Almost flat. Across the prints we detected on those two contracts through the day:
| CONTRACT | AT 09:15 | LATE SESSION | FOR THIS TRADE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24350 CALL (bought) | ₹119.70 | ₹119.60 | went nowhere |
| 24350 PUT (sold) | ₹81.50 | ₹60.85 | fell ~25% — good for a seller |
The whole result sat in the put leg. Someone who sold that put watched it lose a quarter of its value, which is exactly what they wanted. The call — the only leg our card named — finished the day where it started.
The two lessons
- A two-leg trade is not one chart
- Looking at the call alone showed a flat-to-ugly line. The position was fine. If a card names a structure — synthetic, straddle, spread — both legs matter, and we now print both.
- “Bullish” is about the stock, not the option price
- It means the flow implies an up view on NIFTY. It is not a prediction that the option contract will gain value. On a flat day an option loses value to time decay no matter which way the flow leaned — that is the option working normally, not the read being wrong. A bought call and a sold put feel that same decay in opposite directions.
Newer things you may have seen
- Building Now
- Which strikes are adding open interest right now, refreshed through the session (9:15 AM – 3:40 PM IST). It shows where positions are being built today, rather than yesterday's finished picture.
- Round trip on the trade tape
- A print of similar size going the opposite way on the same contract,
at least 30 minutes later, with both sides clearly one-sided. That pattern
looks like a position opened and then closed.
We never claim it was the same trader — we cannot see identities. It is a pattern worth seeing, not proof. Stocks only: index strikes trade both ways all day, so there the same pattern is usually coincidence. - Call Wall · Put Wall whale tracker
- The strikes holding the most call or put open interest — where the most contracts are parked. Whether a wall acts as support or resistance depends on where the price is now, which is shown next to it.
What we will not tell you
- Who traded. Exchanges do not publish identities. Anyone claiming to show you "FII bought this call" is inferring it.
- What happens next. We grade evidence, not outcomes. A 100 means the evidence is clean, not that the trade will work.
- A direction we cannot see. When a trade fills between bid and ask we say "Direction Unclear" and leave it there.
Something here still unclear, or a term missing? Tell us — the list came from our own code, so if a label is confusing it is our wording that needs fixing, not your reading.