BackQuant Glossary
Resistance
A price level where selling pressure has historically appeared and price has stalled or reversed. Strong resistance often coincides with call walls, max pain, prior highs, or round numbers. A confirmed break of resistance often produces follow-through.
Related terms
Call Wall
The strike with the largest concentration of dealer-positive gamma above the current spot price. Acts as resistance because dealers progressively sell underlying as price approaches it. Call walls are often the dominant ceiling into options expiry.
Max Pain
The strike price at which option buyers collectively lose the most at expiry, or equivalently, where total intrinsic-value payouts are minimized. In positive-gamma regimes, dealer hedging pulls price toward max pain into expiry. The pin window is typically the last few hours before settlement.
Range
A price regime bounded by clear support and resistance, with mean-reverting behaviour inside. Ranges are most likely in positive-gamma environments and tend to compress as expiry approaches.
Realized Volatility
The volatility actually observed in the underlying over a window of time, calculated from historical price changes. The persistent gap between realized and implied volatility is the volatility risk premium - the structural reason selling options has positive expected value.
Regime
The character of price action over a period: trending or ranging, high-vol or low-vol, positive or negative gamma. Regime classification is the single most important input to strategy selection. A signal that works in one regime often fails in another.
Go deeper
See Resistance live on the terminal.
BackQuant is the analytics terminal for equity and crypto options. GEX walls, dealer positioning, options flow, and the full derivatives context - one product.