Max Pain Options Screener
Find the max pain strike for any optionable stock — the price where most options expire worthless and market makers profit most. Built from full open-interest data across 5,000+ stocks.
| Symbol | Nearest Expiry | Max Pain | OI at Expiry ▼ | PCR |
|---|
What is Max Pain?
Max pain is the strike price at which the largest dollar value of options (calls + puts combined) expires worthless — the price where option buyers collectively lose the most money and option writers (mostly market makers) profit most. The theory: market makers, who are net short most options, have a flow incentive to hedge in a way that pulls the underlying toward the max pain strike as expiration approaches.
How is max pain calculated?
For each candidate settlement price S among available strikes:
payout(S) = Σ max(S − K_call, 0) × OI_call (call holders' payout)
+ Σ max(K_put − S, 0) × OI_put (put holders' payout)
max_pain = strike S that MINIMIZES total payoutHow to use this screener
- Pinning candidates: filter for high OI (≥100K) on names trading near max pain heading into Friday expiry.
- Direction read: PCR > 1.0 = put-heavy positioning (often hedged longs); PCR < 0.6 = call-heavy.
- Avoid illiquid garbage: max pain theory only matters on names with meaningful market-maker hedging activity.
- SPY, QQQ, and mega-caps are the cleanest signals; small caps with low OI are noise.
Get this in Excel
MarketXLS provides full options-chain access through =opt_OptionChain("AAPL") along with strike-level =opt_Vol_OI and Greeks. Combined with =ImpliedVolatilityRank1y from the IV Rank Screener, you can build a full options dashboard in Excel. Learn more about MarketXLS.