ATAS has two sets of option indicators: Options Chain and Options X-Ray. Some of them have similar names, for example Key Levels and Expected Move, but they are built differently and suit different tasks. This article explains the difference, shows which Options X-Ray indicator replaces a familiar Options Chain tool, and when Options Chain remains the right choice.
The Main Difference: The Data
| Set | What it is built on | Markets |
| Options Chain | Option quotes and open interest from your own data connection, for example Interactive Brokers or Rithmic. Open interest updates once per day, so who bought, who sold, and what changed during the session has to be estimated. | ES, NQ, CL, GC, and other CME futures, if your connection provides options data. |
| Options X-Ray | OptionsDepth analytics derived from CBOE market data for S&P 500 index (SPX) options. Positions are split by participant group and recalculated every minute, so the market-maker position is calculated instead of estimated. | ES, MES, SPY, and US 500 only. |
Everything else follows from this difference: why the numbers of the two sets do not match, and why Options X-Ray has tools that cannot be built from open interest at all.
Which Options X-Ray Indicator Replaces Which Tool
| You used | Use in Options X-Ray |
| Options Chain: Key Levels | Options X-Ray: Key Levels: the same labeled levels, recalculated every minute, plus the Slippery zone. |
| Max Pain | The Pin level in Options X-Ray: Key Levels. |
| Open interest by strike | Options X-Ray: Strike Profile in Delta (DEX) mode, with positions split by participant group. |
| GEX Profile | Options X-Ray: Strike Profile in Gamma (GEX) mode, and Options X-Ray: GEX Heatmap for the picture across the whole day. |
| Options Chain: Expected Move | Options X-Ray: Expected Move. |
| Any market other than the S&P 500 family | Stay with Options Chain. |
If you are not sure where to start, start with Options X-Ray: Key Levels. It has the same format you know from Options Chain: Key Levels. Add the other Options X-Ray indicators when you want to see more detail.
Key Levels
Options Chain: Key Levels calculates levels from yesterday's open interest. Options X-Ray: Key Levels recalculates them every minute, so a wall that did not exist in the morning can become the main level by noon, and the indicator shows it right away. Walls are drawn as zones that show the real width of the slowdown area, and each wall has a strength in ES contracts.
Options X-Ray: Key Levels also has a level that open interest cannot show: Slippery, a zone where market-maker hedging works with the move and price can pass faster than usual. To find such a zone, you need to know the sign of the market-maker position, not just the number of contracts.
Max Pain and Pin
Max Pain counts contracts and finds the strike where option buyers would lose the most at expiration. The count itself does not move price. What moves price is market-maker hedging around a strong strike, which can hold price near that strike into expiration. The Pin level in Options X-Ray: Key Levels shows this strike directly, recalculated every minute. Pin does not have to match Max Pain on public websites: they measure different things.
Open Interest
Open interest is a count of contracts. To use it, a trader has to guess who holds the positions and how much they affect price. Options X-Ray: Strike Profile shows the position at each strike already converted into ES contracts and split by participant group: retail traders, professional clients, firms, brokers, or market makers. The numbers do not match open-interest charts, and they should not: a far strike with many contracts barely affects price, so it takes little space here.
GEX Profile
GEX Profile in Options Chain estimates market-maker gamma from daily open interest and assumes that clients behave in a typical way. In Options X-Ray, Strike Profile in Gamma (GEX) mode shows the same profile by strike without this assumption, and you can view it for any minute of the day. GEX Heatmap goes further: it shows how walls move during the session, where the regime boundary is, and what may happen by the close.
Expected Move
Options Chain: Expected Move uses option quotes from your connection and has no history: the corridor starts from the current bar. Options X-Ray: Expected Move is recalculated every minute and keeps history, so you can see how the market widened the corridor before news and narrowed it after.
When Options Chain Is the Right Choice
Options Chain is not being replaced. Options X-Ray works only on the S&P 500 family, so on NQ, oil, gold, and other CME futures, Options Chain is the tool to use, with options data from your connection. If a daily picture is enough for you, levels from open interest still do their job.
Why Options X-Ray Works Only on the S&P 500
The data exists only for SPX options. Minute-level positioning by participant group is available only for S&P 500 index options. For other markets, such data either does not exist in this form or would be incomplete, and a map of forces built from incomplete data cannot be trusted.
Only on the S&P 500 is the effect strong enough. Options X-Ray is based on the idea that market-maker hedging is a significant force for the underlying market. For the S&P 500, this is true: option volume is huge, and market-maker hedging is visible on the ES chart. In markets where options are small compared with the underlying, the same mechanism exists, but it is lost among all other trading.
Why ES, MES, SPY, and US 500 work. These instruments move together with the S&P 500 index, and market-maker hedging of SPX options also goes into ES. The indicators calculate the offset between the chart instrument and the index automatically, so the levels match the candles on your chart.
If you do not trade ES, the S&P 500 picture can still help as general market context. Whether the index is in a calm or a fast regime often affects NQ and individual stocks too. The exact levels in points, however, belong to the ES chart.
Troubleshooting
| What happens | What to do |
| The numbers in Options Chain and Options X-Ray do not match | This is expected. The sets use different data: daily open interest and estimates in Options Chain, minute-level positioning in Options X-Ray. |
| Options X-Ray indicators draw nothing on NQ, CL, or GC | Options X-Ray works only on ES, MES, SPY, and US 500 charts. Use Options Chain for other markets. |
| Options Chain indicators draw nothing | Options Chain needs options data from your connection. Check that your data provider supports options for this instrument. |
| Options X-Ray indicators are not in the list | Options X-Ray indicators are part of a separate package. Check whether the package is enabled in your account. |
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