Practical guides to working with Indian index options data — reading open interest, backtesting with historical option chains, and getting the most out of expired-contract history. Written by the team that maintains the MoneyTicks options data archive.
What it actually takes to store per-minute Indian options data — table design, the row counts involved, why time-series databases behave differently, and the query that will take your site down.
How to recover implied volatility from recorded option prices, why IV crush around events is larger than most traders expect, and how to check both on data rather than taking them on trust.
Kite Connect and SmartAPI stop serving option contracts once they expire. Here is why that happens, what your actual options are, and how to work around it.
Max pain is one of the most repeated ideas in Indian options trading and one of the least tested. What it actually computes, why the causal story is weaker than it sounds, and how to check it yourself.
The exchange publishes free end-of-day data for every contract. What the F&O bhavcopy contains, how to parse it, the format changes that break loaders, and the point at which it stops being enough.
Weekly and monthly index options behave differently enough that a strategy validated on one can fail on the other. What differs, why, and how the 2024 expiry rationalisation changed the picture.
A working NIFTY options backtest in Python — pulling historical option chains and 1-minute candles, handling the survivorship and liquidity traps specific to options, and measuring the result honestly.
An honest comparison of the free and paid sources for historical and expired Indian index options data — what each actually covers, where the gaps are, and which one fits your use case.
What open interest actually measures, how to read OI alongside price, and the four price–OI combinations that matter — with worked NIFTY examples and the data you need to check them yourself.
Theta decay is taught as a smooth curve. Recorded expired-contract data shows something lumpier — decay concentrated in specific sessions and hours, and dominated by volatility moves until the very end.