Max Pain

How Draconic reads it

Near expiry, price tends to gravitate toward max pain through the mechanics of incentive alignment and delta hedging rather than any coordinated activity. Option writers — typically institutions and market makers — collectively benefit from settlement near max pain, and their hedging flows create mechanical pressure in that direction. The gravitational pull strengthens as expiry approaches, becoming most pronounced in the final day or two before the weekly NIFTY expiry, which now settles on Tuesday. Max pain is one input among several — not a price target to trade mechanically — but combined with put and call walls and the gamma regime, it contributes to a coherent picture of the session's mechanical forces. The 200-point gap between current price and max pain is meaningful context. A 20-point gap is less so.