Dealer positioning: flow vs std

Dealer exposure needs a sign at every contract: is the desk long or short that option’s gamma? Two models are available on the live GEX and TRACE surfaces.

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Models

Pass ?positioning=flow or ?positioning=std. Omit the param to get flow. Every response that rebuilds live exposure reports the effective model in:

• data.positioning when present
• meta.extra.positioning and meta.extra.positioning_requested
• meta.extra.positioning_fallback_reason when flow was requested but std ran instead

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Aggregation

Live signed surfaces use:

1. Chain - multi-venue options chain (Deribit, Bybit, OKX, Binance) for greeks and OI.
2. Tape (flow only) - multi-venue aggressor trades for the same coins. Size is coin-normalized so venues can be summed.

GEX dollar unit is unchanged: γ × S² × qty × 0.01 (USD impact per 1% spot move), where qty is flow sold-bought or std signed OI. Details also appear under meta.extra.aggregation (chain_venues, flow_venues, flow_method, gex_scale, note).

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Coin coverage

If flow is empty for BTC/ETH, the API also falls back to std and sets a reason such as flow_tape_empty or flow_qty_all_zero.

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Live vs history

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Customer flow vs dealer hedge flow

Do not mix these up: Positive on dealer-flow ≈ estimated dealer buying the underlying to re-hedge. Positive on delta-flow ≈ net customer buy-side delta notional.

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