Market Map
Markets are not a list of separate products. An index is referenced by futures, tracked by funds, wrapped in leveraged ETFs, hedged with options and shorted through venues that report off-exchange. A position taken in one instrument leaves a footprint in several others, and most of those footprints are published somewhere.
Hover any node to isolate what it touches.
What the lines mean
Each point on the ring is an instrument class. Each line is a dependency: the instrument at one end cannot be priced, hedged or unwound without reference to the instrument at the other. A leveraged ETF depends on the index it tracks, the futures used to obtain that exposure, and the options written against it. A fund depends on the bonds and currency pairs it holds. Nothing on the ring stands alone except by accident of scale.
That is why single-instrument analysis fails so often. A move in an equity index is rarely a statement about equities. It can be the unwind of a leveraged ETF rebalance, the hedging of an options book, a futures roll, or a fund meeting redemptions in an entirely different asset. The tape shows the equity print; the cause sits one or two edges away.
The instruments that never report
Some of the heaviest edges on this map carry no public disclosure at all.
- Swaps - OTC equity and index swaps give synthetic exposure with a financing cost. The exposure is real; the position is on no tape.
- Total return swaps - synthetic equity exposure including dividends. The structure that let Archegos accumulate positions no counterparty could see in aggregate until the unwind.
- Variance swaps - pure volatility exposure, a bet on realised movement without taking delta or gamma. Institutional and OTC only.
- Contracts for difference - illegal for US retail, widely used elsewhere, and invisible here.
Dark pool short volume sits at the junction of all of them: an off-exchange short is frequently the visible leg of a position whose other leg is a swap. The short prints, the swap does not. Anyone reading short volume as a directional opinion is reading half a trade.
This is the structural argument for measuring what is published, precisely, rather than assuming the published numbers are the whole picture. They are the observable edges of a graph whose interior is private.
Where entanglement becomes measurable
Four points on this map are backed by mandatory reporting. They are where a private position leaves a public trace.
- GEX - where options meet equities. Dealer gamma exposure derived from open options positioning, and the hedging flow it forces in the underlying. Recomputed intraday.
- Max Pain - the same edge, a different question: the strike at which the largest notional of open options expires worthless.
- COT - where futures meet indices. Commitment of Traders positioning, published weekly by the CFTC, split by participant category.
- Dark pool shorts - where off-exchange venues meet indices and funds. Daily short volume from FINRA reporting, published one day in arrears.
Each is produced by someone else - the options exchanges, the CFTC, FINRA. Obtaining them is not the work. Reading them against each other, on the same day and under the same conditions, is.
Reading them together
Taken alone each measurement is a number with a well-known caveat. Gamma exposure describes hedging pressure, not intent. Short volume includes hedges, not just bearish opinion. Futures positioning is a week stale by the time it is published. Max pain is an expiry-week gravity argument, not a forecast.
Read against each other on the same session, the caveats start cancelling. Hedging pressure tells you whether flows are dampening moves or amplifying them. Off-exchange short volume tells you whether selling is directional or the visible half of something built elsewhere on this map. Futures positioning tells you who was already leaning that way before the open. None of them is a signal. Together they describe a mechanism, and a mechanism is something you can be early to.
That is what this site measures, and why the map is worth drawing before any single indicator is discussed.