Nifty Chronicles

Market Overview & Analysis

← Back to Home

Nifty 50 — Expiry Support & Resistance Zones

Strong zones derived from options open interest across 5 expiries, cross-validated against price action. A level is only called strong when the OI wall and an independent price level agree.

Spot 23,141 · as of 2026-09-27 20:55 IST · source DhanHQ v2 (dhanhq.co/docs/v2/)

Informational only

Levels, scenarios and probabilities only. Not trade advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any strike — per SEBI Investment Advisers Regulations 2013 / Research Analysts Regulations 2014.

Nearest resistance

23,500

+1.55% · 5 confirmations

Nearest support

22,000

−4.93% · 3 confirmations

Strong zones

7

3 resistance · 4 support

Expiries analysed

5

nearest 22,000 → far 25,000 max pain

52-week high

26,373

set 2026-01-05

52-week low

22,183

set 2026-04-02

DMA 20 / 50

23,553 / 23,994

spot below both

Price-action lookback

246

2025-09-29 → 2026-09-25

Resistance — overhead ladder

Strongest ceiling first. Each row lists every independent reason the level exists; the confirm count is how many of those agreed.

ZoneDistanceExpiriesConfirmsEvidence
24,500+5.87%25
  • oi_wall: 24500 call OI 1.07 Cr contracts (1.73x the 90th-percentile strike, 4.91% of all resistance OI, unwinding -19.60 L) on 2026-09-29
  • price: high/low pivot at 24,531 touched 3x (last 2026-07-07)
  • round: 24,500 grid level
  • trend: DMA200 at 24,417
  • agreement: OI in this band across 2 expiries (2026-09-29, 2026-10-27)
24,000+3.71%35
  • oi_wall: 24000 call OI 1.58 Cr contracts (2.56x the 90th-percentile strike, 7.25% of all resistance OI, unwinding -35.66 L) on 2026-09-29
  • price: high/low pivot at 24,058 touched 2x (last 2026-08-19)
  • round: 24,000 grid level
  • trend: DMA50 at 23,994
  • agreement: OI in this band across 3 expiries (2026-09-29, 2026-10-27, 2026-11-23)
23,500+1.55%35
  • oi_wall: 23500 call OI 1.46 Cr contracts (2.36x the 90th-percentile strike, 6.69% of all resistance OI, building 10.52 L) on 2026-09-29
  • price: high/low pivot at 23,489 touched 3x (last 2026-09-22)
  • round: 23,500 grid level
  • trend: DMA20 at 23,553
  • agreement: OI in this band across 3 expiries (2026-09-29, 2026-10-27, 2026-11-23)

Support — underlying ladder

Nearest floor first. Support sitting below spot is where put writers have positioned; a level tagged unwinding is losing that positioning.

ZoneDistanceExpiriesConfirmsEvidence
22,000−4.93%23
  • oi_wall: 22000 put OI 1.31 Cr contracts (2.7x the 90th-percentile strike, 6.5% of all support OI, building 9.49 L) on 2026-09-29
  • round: 22,000 grid level
  • agreement: OI in this band across 2 expiries (2026-09-29, 2026-11-23)
22,500−2.77%12
  • oi_wall: 22500 put OI 32.70 L contracts (2.93x the 90th-percentile strike, 7.24% of all support OI, building 2.12 L) on 2026-10-27
  • round: 22,500 grid level
23,000−0.61%33
  • oi_wall: 23000 put OI 1.46 Cr contracts (3.01x the 90th-percentile strike, 7.25% of all support OI, building 28.50 L) on 2026-09-29
  • round: 23,000 grid level
  • agreement: OI in this band across 3 expiries (2026-09-29, 2026-10-27, 2026-11-23)
23,100−0.18%13
  • oi_wall: 23100 put OI 1.15 Cr contracts (2.36x the 90th-percentile strike, 5.69% of all support OI, building 38.67 L) on 2026-09-29
  • price: low pivot at 23,093 touched 2x (last 2026-09-16)
  • round: 23,000 grid level

Unconfirmed — single source

These carry an OI wall but no second independent reason to exist, so they are listed rather than trusted.

ZoneSideDistanceEvidence
25,000resistance+8.04%
  • oi_wall: 25000 call OI 9.66 L contracts (4.42x the 90th-percentile strike, 15.04% of all resistance OI, building 79.3K) on 2026-11-23

Aggregated Open Interest Ladder

Call and put open interest summed across every analysed expiry, plotted ±6% around spot (23,141). Solid bars sit on the live side of the market — call OI above spot is overhead supply, put OI below spot is underlying support — while faded bars are the decaying far side. The vertical axis is logarithmic: a single front-month wall can carry 15 million contracts next to far strikes holding a few hundred, and a linear axis would flatten every readable strike to nothing.

Zone Distance from Spot

Every confirmed zone plotted by distance from spot, resistance above and support below. Bar length is the percentage move required to reach the level.

Implied Volatility Term Structure

ATM implied volatility by expiry. Contango means the market is pricing genuine event risk further out; backwardation means near-term risk is expected to settle.

Put-Call Ratio by Expiry

Total put OI divided by total call OI per expiry. Above 1.2 leans put-heavy, below 0.7 call-heavy, in between neutral.

Per-expiry detail

2026-09-29· DTE 1

ATM 23,150 · ATM IV 12.78% · total OI 41.99 Cr · PCR 0.9213 (neutral range-bound) · max pain 23,250 · straddle 23,031–23,227

Call OI — resistance

24,000 — 1.58 Cr contracts · 2.56× p90 · 7.25% of side · unwinding 35.66 L

23,500 — 1.46 Cr contracts · 2.36× p90 · 6.69% of side · building 10.52 L

24,500 — 1.07 Cr contracts · 1.73× p90 · 4.91% of side · unwinding 19.60 L

Put OI — support

23,000 — 1.46 Cr contracts · 3.01× p90 · 7.25% of side · building 28.50 L

22,000 — 1.31 Cr contracts · 2.7× p90 · 6.5% of side · building 9.49 L

23,100 — 1.15 Cr contracts · 2.36× p90 · 5.69% of side · building 38.67 L

2026-10-27· DTE 29

ATM 23,150 · ATM IV 11.49% · total OI 8.66 Cr · PCR 1.0898 (neutral range-bound) · max pain 23,500 · straddle 22,780–23,408

Call OI — resistance

23,500 — 61.85 L contracts · 5.95× p90 · 14.92% of side · building 5.41 L

24,000 — 52.41 L contracts · 5.04× p90 · 12.64% of side · building 8.00 L

24,500 — 27.38 L contracts · 2.64× p90 · 6.6% of side · building 2.59 L

Put OI — support

23,500 — 59.95 L contracts · 5.37× p90 · 13.27% of side · building 1.98 L

23,000 — 47.90 L contracts · 4.29× p90 · 10.6% of side · building 3.28 L

22,500 — 32.70 L contracts · 2.93× p90 · 7.24% of side · building 2.12 L

2026-11-23· DTE 56

ATM 23,150 · ATM IV 11.33% · total OI 1.25 Cr · PCR 0.9393 (neutral range-bound) · max pain 23,500 · straddle 22,609–23,481

Call OI — resistance

25,000 — 9.66 L contracts · 4.42× p90 · 15.04% of side · building 79.3K

24,000 — 8.45 L contracts · 3.86× p90 · 13.16% of side · building 54.3K

23,500 — 7.18 L contracts · 3.28× p90 · 11.18% of side · building 29.7K

Put OI — support

23,000 — 9.04 L contracts · 4.09× p90 · 14.99% of side · building 31.4K

22,000 — 7.31 L contracts · 3.31× p90 · 12.11% of side · building 1.51 L

23,500 — 6.46 L contracts · 2.92× p90 · 10.71% of side · building 59.9K

2026-12-29· DTE 92

ATM 23,000 · ATM IV 11.1% · total OI 4.00 Cr · PCR 1.2332 (oversold — put-heavy, support bias) · max pain 25,000 · straddle 22,149–23,337

Call OI — resistance

No qualifying wall.

Put OI — support

No qualifying wall.

2027-12-28· DTE 456

ATM 23,000 · ATM IV 8.59% · total OI 17.02 L · PCR 1.507 (oversold — put-heavy, support bias) · max pain 25,000 · straddle 23,000–23,611

Call OI — resistance

No qualifying wall.

Put OI — support

No qualifying wall.

Confluence summary

The most heavily evidenced ceiling is **24,500** (+5.87% away), backed by 5 independent confirmations across 2 expiry series. The mirror floor is **22,000** (-4.93%), 3 confirmations across 2 expiries. ATM IV falls into the long-dated contracts (backwardation), the market expects the current volatility regime to decay.

IV read: Backwardation — ATM IV decays from 12.78% to 8.59% across the curve. The market expects near-term event risk to be front-loaded and to settle after.

Price-action levels (backward-looking leg)

  • 52-week high 26,373 (2026-01-05) · low 22,183 (2026-04-02)
  • DMAs — 20: 23,553 · 50: 23,994 · 100: 23,913 · 200: 24,417
  • Swing pivots by touch count — 23,809 (6×, high/low) · 25,882 (4×, high/low) · 23,489 (3×, high/low) · 24,367 (3×, high) · 24,531 (3×, high/low) · 25,473 (3×, high/low) · 25,718 (3×, low) · 23,093 (2×, low)

Data-integrity notes

These caveats travel with the data. They are surfaced rather than quietly corrected.

  • **No historical option chain exists at DhanHQ.** `/optionchain` is real-time only, so the OI leg of this analysis is a single dated snapshot taken 20:55 IST and can only be accumulated forward. The price-action leg is fully retroactive. No claim here about where OI *was* in past months is made or implied.
  • **Dhan states OI updates more slowly than LTP** for the option chain API. An intraday snapshot can therefore mix fresh premiums with lagged open interest; the two may not be simultaneous to the second.
  • **Long-dated legs are structurally thin.** Far expiries carry far lower absolute OI than the front monthlies because of the time value in those contracts — low OI there is a structural feature, NOT weak conviction, and is not graded as such. Chains below 5.00 L total contracts are additionally tagged *thin* and their walls carry less weight.
  • **Dhan's expiry list mixes monthly, quarterly and far-monthly contracts.** A month with only one expiry is normally a quarterly. `is_monthly` flags this and the per-expiry blocks are labelled, but a quarterly expiry can still appear in a seasonal slot if the exchange lists no true monthly there.
  • **The chain includes deep listed wings, not just near-ATM strikes.** Wall detection keeps only strikes within ±25% of spot; deeper wings are dropped from the median so a far-OTM strike cannot masquerade as a wall.
  • **OI is reported in contracts, not lots or lakh shares.** The repo's daily report uses lakh shares; mixing the two silently is a known error mode, so all figures here are raw contracts straight from the exchange feed.
  • **Price-action lookback is 246 sessions** (2025-09-29 → 2026-09-25), a 3-bar fractal pivot with pivots clustered within 100 points. Levels outside ±12% of spot are dropped; the 52-week high/low is always printed separately even when outside that band.

Sources

Every figure on this page is produced by scripts/dhan-expiry-zones.py and stored under data/dhan-expiry-zones/. Nothing is recomputed in the browser.

  • GET /v2/profile
  • POST /v2/optionchain/expirylist
  • POST /v2/optionchain (one snapshot per expiry, 1 req/3s limit)
  • POST /v2/charts/historical (daily candles, price-action leg)
  • https://images.dhan.co/api-data/api-scrip-master-detailed.csv (scrip resolution)
  • DhanHQ API v2 documentation

Dhan security id 13, segment IDX_I. Snapshot accumulated 5 chains for forward wall-migration tracking.