Multistrike Open Interest

Multistrike open interest refers to a view that plots open interest across a whole range of strike prices in an option chain at the same time, rather than looking at one strike in isolation. Instead of a single number, it’s typically shown as a bar or histogram running across strikes, with call OI and put OI plotted separately, so the overall shape of positioning across the chain becomes visible at a glance.

For Nifty and Bank Nifty options, where dozens of strikes trade actively in a single expiry, a multistrike OI view lets traders quickly see where the bulk of call writing and put writing is concentrated without scrolling through the entire option chain strike by strike. This aggregated picture feeds directly into concepts like an OI wall and max pain, since both depend on comparing OI levels across many strikes rather than looking at any single one.

As expiry approaches, especially on the weekly Nifty and Bank Nifty expiries, the multistrike OI picture tends to shift session by session — call OI building up at higher strikes as writers sell resistance, or put OI building at lower strikes as writers sell support. Watching how this distribution moves day to day, alongside the day’s change in OI, gives a sense of where the market expects price to stay range-bound versus where it expects a breakout.

The trade-off with a multistrike view is that it shows relative scale across strikes well but can flatten out the finer detail at any one strike; for that, traders switch to a strikewise open interest view, which isolates a single strike’s calls and puts and their change in OI in more precise detail.