QQQ max pain today
QQQ (the Nasdaq-100 ETF) · open interest from the close on 2026-07-23 · last price $684.23 on 2026-07-24 · 6,518 option contracts in the chain
What is QQQ max pain today?
QQQ max pain is $707.00 for the 2026-07-27 expiration, computed from open interest recorded at the close on 2026-07-23. QQQ last traded at $684.23 on 2026-07-24, which is 3.22% below that level, with 2 calendar days to run before the contracts expire. That same expiration carries 106,072 put contracts against 29,629 calls — a put/call open-interest ratio of 3.58 — with the heaviest single call strike (the call wall) at $715.00 and the heaviest put strike (the put wall) at $525.00. Max pain is the settlement price that would hand option buyers the smallest total payout; it describes where contracts are parked, not where QQQ has to trade. Open interest is settled once a trading day, so this page is a nightly snapshot, never an intraday reading.
How to read this QQQ configuration
Start with the distance. QQQ is 3.22% below max pain. That is a real gap — bigger than a typical quiet day. Traders who follow the pinning idea would read it as room for drift back toward the level, but a gap this size is just as often the market repricing faster than open interest can follow. With only 2 days left, whatever pinning pressure exists is at its strongest here — and so is the risk of one headline making it irrelevant.
Now the walls. The call wall is $715.00 (+4.50% from the last price) and the put wall is $525.00 (-23.27% from the last price). A wall is simply the one strike where the most contracts are outstanding — nothing more. The last price sits between the two, which is the ordinary case: the heaviest put strike below, the heaviest call strike above, and the shares in the corridor between them. Traders watch those edges because dealer hedging tends to get busier as price approaches a big strike, not because either edge is a guaranteed floor or ceiling.
Finally the ratio. At 3.58, there are noticeably more puts outstanding than calls. That is often read as hedging demand, but remember open interest does not tell you who is long and who is short — a put can be outstanding because someone bought protection or because someone sold it for income. The ratio measures activity, not fear.
The caveat that matters. Max pain is arithmetic on open interest. It describes positioning — where contracts already sit — and it is not a target, a forecast, or a level QQQ owes anybody. Every number on this page is descriptive and educational; none of it is investment advice.
Open interest by strike — 2026-07-27
■ call open interest ■ put open interest — strikes within roughly ±15% of max pain. Each bar is the number of contracts still outstanding at that strike, not the volume traded that day.
Text version of this chart
For the 2026-07-27 expiration, the three strikes with the most call open interest are $715.00 (1,794 contracts), $735.00 (1,694 contracts), $720.00 (1,626 contracts). The three strikes with the most put open interest are $680.00 (6,070 contracts), $690.00 (5,544 contracts), $670.00 (4,970 contracts). Max pain for this expiration is $707.00 and the last traded price was $684.23.
QQQ max pain by expiration
Every listed expiration in the 2026-07-23 chain. Each row is computed independently: max pain for a monthly contract can sit far from the weekly one, because different expirations attract different crowds.
| Expiration | Max pain | Price vs MP | Put/call | Call wall | Put wall | Call OI | Put OI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-23 | $706.00 | -3.08% | 1.67 | $720.00 | $700.00 | 116,097 | 194,395 |
| 2026-07-24 | $707.00 | -3.22% | 2.01 | $725.00 | $700.00 | 201,570 | 405,697 |
| 2026-07-27 · front | $707.00 | -3.22% | 3.58 | $715.00 | $525.00 | 29,629 | 106,072 |
| 2026-07-28 | $706.00 | -3.08% | 2.27 | $730.00 | $670.00 | 22,065 | 50,093 |
| 2026-07-29 | $705.00 | -2.95% | 1.12 | $720.00 | $610.00 | 25,708 | 28,685 |
| 2026-07-30 | $703.00 | -2.67% | 1.10 | $726.00 | $605.00 | 20,361 | 22,442 |
| 2026-07-31 | $714.00 | -4.17% | 1.40 | $730.00 | $695.00 | 381,453 | 534,675 |
| 2026-08-03 | $708.00 | -3.36% | 1.19 | $730.00 | $665.00 | 8,558 | 10,138 |
| 2026-08-04 | $705.00 | -2.95% | 0.95 | $720.00 | $675.00 | 4,438 | 4,224 |
| 2026-08-05 | $705.00 | -2.95% | 1.28 | $735.00 | $650.00 | 1,634 | 2,097 |
| 2026-08-07 | $712.00 | -3.90% | 3.01 | $735.00 | $690.00 | 60,093 | 180,993 |
| 2026-08-14 | $703.00 | -2.67% | 0.85 | $735.00 | $600.00 | 68,005 | 58,076 |
| 2026-08-21 | $705.00 | -2.95% | 1.45 | $750.00 | $680.00 | 470,554 | 682,158 |
| 2026-08-28 | $708.00 | -3.36% | 1.23 | $950.00 | $530.00 | 14,622 | 17,999 |
| 2026-08-31 | $715.00 | -4.30% | 0.86 | $950.00 | $615.00 | 93,743 | 80,886 |
QQQ max pain history
One row per nightly snapshot we have kept, newest first, always for the front expiration. Read it as a series of separate photographs, not a price line. The front contract rolls forward every week or so, and when it rolls the max pain figure jumps to a completely different chain — so always compare the expiration column, not just the date.
| Snapshot date | Front expiration | Max pain | Price | Price vs MP | Put/call |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-23 | 2026-07-24 | $707.00 | $684.23 | -3.22% | 2.01 |
| 2026-07-10 | 2026-07-13 | $720.00 | $725.51 | +0.77% | 2.93 |
New to this? Start here
If the words on this page are unfamiliar, read them in order. What is max pain works the sum through by hand on a five-strike example, so you can see there is no black box in it. What is gamma exposure covers the other half of the picture: what the dealers who sold all these contracts have to do in the shares to stay hedged. Max pain vs gamma exposure puts the two side by side and shows what it means when they disagree.
The dealer-hedging view of the same QQQ chain
Max pain asks a settlement question: where would the payout be smallest on expiry day? Gamma exposure asks a daily question: as QQQ moves, how many shares must the dealers who sold these options buy or sell to stay hedged? Same open interest, different lens. See QQQ gamma exposure for net GEX, the gamma flip level, and the largest gamma walls.
Pointing an AI agent at this? These pages are plain server-rendered HTML with real tables, so an agent can read them without a scraper or a key. When you want the same discipline applied to price action instead of options, Quant Data sells two JSON endpoints: Brooks Daily Bias for day-type probabilities and Weis Wave for volume-wave events, with the accuracy numbers published up front on pricing.
Max pain for other tickers
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Derived from end-of-day open interest and updated nightly — a computed metric, not raw market data, and not a live quote (how we compute it). Educational only: not investment advice, not a recommendation, not a price forecast.