Questions
Two sets of questions. The first is about this site — what it is, who writes it, and why it refuses to do certain things. The second is about the subject itself, and covers what people most often ask before they know which page they need.
Part one
About this site
What is this site?
A free reference for how markets work underneath the chart. Order flow, futures, options and options flow, explained down to the definition, the mechanics and the history. It is closer to an encyclopedia than a course.
Who writes it?
One person: Jaisman, publishing as s7ven. Both names refer to the same individual, which is stated formally in the Terms and the Legal page. There is no team, no company, and no editorial board.
Is it free? Is anything for sale?
Free, and nothing is for sale. No course, no mentorship, no signal group, no indicator, no affiliate links, no advertising, no newsletter upsell. If that ever changes it will be stated on this page before anywhere else.
Why are there no strategies?
Because a strategy is not a portable object. It carries an instrument, a timeframe, a cost structure, a fill assumption, a position size and a person with a particular tolerance for being wrong. Strip those away and what is left only sounds like a rule.
The longer version of this argument is in The Column, and the argument about why edges are a strange thing to sell is in The Pitch.
Is this for beginners?
Partly. Every concept page opens with a one-sentence definition that stands alone, so you can start anywhere. But the site does not simplify to the point of being wrong, and it spends as much space on where a tool misleads as on what it measures. Someone entirely new to markets will find it demanding. Someone who has been trading a year and keeps meeting terms they have only half understood is exactly the reader it is written for.
Where do the definitions come from?
They are written from primary sources where those exist: exchange contract specifications, regulatory texts, and the original work of the people who developed each idea. Where a source is genuinely disputed, the page says so rather than picking one and sounding confident.
Why does every page have a limitations section?
Because a measurement you understand the failure modes of is a tool, and the same measurement without them is a superstition with a chart attached. Most order flow content explains what a metric shows and stops. The part that gets people into trouble is the part that gets left out.
Are the numbers accurate?
Contract specifications, tick values and lot sizes change, and third-party summaries go stale quietly. Anything numerical on this site that has not been checked against a primary source carries an unverified badge. Always confirm against the exchange’s own contract page before relying on a figure, including figures here.
Why is the options flow section so heavily caveated?
Because that section rests on an assumption no one can verify. Exchanges publish open interest, not ownership. Every gamma exposure figure, every wall, every flip level is built on an assumed answer to the question of who holds which side. The assumption is reasonable and it is sometimes wrong, and when it is wrong the number can have the wrong sign. That is worth stating loudly rather than burying.
Does this cover Indian markets?
The concepts are the same everywhere; the specifications are not. Order flow, futures, options and options flow mechanics apply identically to Nifty and to the S&P. Contract specifications, lot sizes, expiry cycles and settlement rules differ, and instrument-specific pages will be marked with which exchange they describe.
Can I request a term?
Yes, and requests are the most useful thing you can send. If you have met a term and cannot find a clear explanation of it anywhere, that is exactly the gap this site exists to fill. Write to support@thecurve.in.
I think something here is wrong.
Please say so. Corrections are acted on, and a factual dispute with a source attached will be resolved in favour of the source. support@thecurve.in.
Can I quote or link to this?
Link freely, no permission needed. Quote with attribution. Please do not republish substantial portions wholesale under another name. The concepts described here belong to the field and are not claimed as anyone’s invention; the specific writing, design and diagrams are the author’s own work.
Does the site collect anything about me?
No accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no advertising, no third-party scripts of any kind. Your acceptance of the terms is recorded in your own browser and sent nowhere. There is nothing here to breach because there is nothing here to collect.
Why does it ask me to agree to terms?
This site describes leveraged instruments. People lose money trading them, sometimes more than they deposited. The agreement exists so there is no ambiguity about what the site is and is not: a reference, not advice, with no guarantee attached and no liability accepted. It takes one click and it is stored locally.
How often is it updated?
Irregularly and honestly. New entries go up when they are ready rather than to a schedule, and each carries the date it was last revised. A reference site that publishes to a calendar ends up padding.
Is there a record of what has changed?
Yes. The Changelog lists every update since the first build, newest first, with the date and what changed for a reader. Filter it by kind or open an entry for the detail.
Why is it called The Curve?
A forward curve is the same instrument priced across successive delivery months. Its shape is the market’s own statement about storage, financing and scarcity — a piece of information that is sitting in plain view and that most people never look at. That seemed like the right name for a site about the things underneath the chart.
Part two
About the subject
Questions that come up before you know which page you need. Each one points at the entry that answers it properly.
Order flow
What is order flow, actually?
The study of the transactions themselves rather than the line they leave behind. A price chart tells you where the market went. Order flow asks a narrower question: who had to cross the spread to get there, how much resting size stood in their way, and whether the effort accomplished anything. Start with The Tape.
Do I need Level 2 or a DOM to study it?
For book-based observations, yes — depth, queue behaviour and iceberg activity are invisible without it. For trade-based measurements like delta, footprint and volume profile, you need the trade stream rather than the book. They are two different data products and platforms bundle them differently.
Does order flow work on stocks, or only futures?
The concepts apply anywhere, but the data quality does not. Futures are centralised: one venue, one book, one tape. Equities are fragmented across many venues, so a delta figure computed from one feed describes that venue rather than the security. This is a large part of why the tooling grew up around futures and remains most defensible there.
Is order flow harder to manipulate than a chart?
No. Displayed orders can be placed with no intention of executing, which is spoofing and is illegal, and legitimate order types like icebergs are designed specifically to conceal size. Working from the book means working from a deliberately incomplete picture.
Why does my delta not match someone else’s?
Because delta is inferred rather than reported, and the inference differs between vendors. Different feeds, tick filters, session boundaries and quote-matching logic produce different numbers from the same session, and neither is wrong. This has its own essay: why your numbers differ from mine.
Is a footprint chart better than a candlestick chart?
It is not better or worse; it shows a different thing. A candle collapses a bar into four prices. A footprint keeps the distribution of activity within it. No information is added — it is the same tape, rearranged so that something previously discarded becomes visible.
Futures
Why does one instrument have several prices at once?
Because a futures market quotes one price per delivery month, each a separate contract with its own book. Plot them together and you get the forward curve. Its shape is covered in contango and backwardation.
What is the difference between volume and open interest?
Volume counts activity; open interest counts outstanding positions. Volume can be enormous on a day when open interest does not change at all, if participants are opening and closing rather than accumulating.
Is futures margin borrowed money?
No. It is a performance bond sized to cover a plausible day’s move, not a loan or a deposit against the contract’s full value. Exchanges raise it when volatility rises. See margin and notional value.
What happens if I hold a contract past expiry?
It depends on the settlement method. A cash-settled contract exchanges the difference against a final reference price. A physically settled one creates a delivery obligation, which is not theoretical, and brokers generally liquidate such positions beforehand. See settlement.
Options
Do I need the mathematics to understand options?
Not to understand what they are, what the premium is made of, or what happens at expiry. You do need it to understand where the Greeks come from, because they are model outputs rather than measurements and they inherit the assumptions of whatever produced them.
Why do two options on the same underlying have different implied volatilities?
Because implied volatility varies across strikes and expiries, forming a surface rather than a single number. The slice across strikes is skew; the slice across time is term structure. Speaking of the implied volatility of an instrument, singular, is always a simplification.
Is implied volatility a forecast?
No. It is the volatility figure that returns the option’s current market price when put into a pricing model. It is a statement about price, expressed in volatility units. See implied volatility and realised volatility.
Options flow
Is gamma exposure real, or is it astrology?
The hedging obligation is real and mechanical: a dealer who takes the other side of your trade must offset it in the underlying and keep adjusting as conditions change. The published figures measuring it are estimates, because exchanges publish open interest and never ownership. Whether any given estimate has even the right sign depends on an assumption nobody can verify. That has its own essay: the assumption underneath every gamma chart.
Do call and put walls hold?
A wall is a description of where contracts sit, not a barrier. They are recomputed daily rather than continuously, they move whenever open interest is rebuilt, and open interest alone says nothing about who is on which side. See call wall.
Has 0DTE changed the market?
It has certainly changed the composition of index option volume since the early 2020s. Options on their final day carry extremely high gamma near the money, so the hedging they generate is concentrated and short-lived. What that does to price behaviour is still actively argued over. See zero days to expiry.
Can a retail trader see institutional flow?
You can see prints. You cannot see intent, ownership, or the position a trade belongs to. A large call purchase may be a directional view, a hedge against a short, one leg of a spread, or a volatility trade with no directional content at all. That boundary has its own entry: what options flow cannot tell you.
Studying it
Where should I start?
With the mechanism rather than the measurement. Aggressor, then bid and ask, then delta. Almost every confusion further along traces back to one of those three being half-understood. There is a start here page laying out seven entries in order, with the reason for the order.
Which order should I take the sections in?
The Tape, then The Contract, then The Right, then The Hedge. Options flow depends on options, which depend on contract mechanics, which are easiest to see in futures. The Feed can be read at any point and is worth reading early.
Do I need paid data or software?
To read this site, nothing. To reproduce most order flow measurements yourself, you need a trade-stream feed, and for anything involving queue position or individual order behaviour you need market-by-order data, which is the more expensive tier. See MBO and MBP.
How many occurrences do I need before an observation means something?
More than you want it to be. Markets produce enough noise that a handful of confirming instances is indistinguishable from chance, and the human mind is exceptionally good at finding structure in noise. The Pitch covers the statistics; The Column covers why the site stops there.