Price and futures open interest rising together — fresh long positions being built, not shorts giving up.
from fno where fut_oi_change_pct > 3 and change > 1
Top 500 by turnover
F&O derivatives scanners for NSE
Price tells you what happened; open interest tells you who is committed to it. Every futures contract is a long and a short who both posted margin, so the direction OI moves alongside price sorts every session into one of four states — long buildup, short buildup, short covering, long unwinding — and the four scans at the top of this page are exactly that grid. Around them sit the other positioning reads: the basis, which is the leveraged market's opinion of the cash price expressed as a premium or discount; the put-call ratio, where extremes mark crowding worth distrusting; and futures volume against its own norm, which is the volume shocker read from the derivatives desk. Two honest limits. Only the roughly 200 stocks with listed futures carry this data — `from fno` in each scan makes that explicit — and open interest is counted in contracts, summed across expiries, because that is the unit NSE publishes. Expiry week bends every one of these numbers: OI drops mechanically as contracts settle, and the basis converges to zero by construction.
Open interest rising into a falling price — fresh shorts being written with conviction.
from fno where fut_oi_change_pct > 3 and change < -1
Top 500 by turnover
Price up while open interest drains — shorts buying back, not buyers arriving.
from fno where fut_oi_change_pct < -3 and change > 1
Top 500 by turnover
Longs closing out into a drifting price — a trend quietly losing its sponsors.
from fno where fut_oi_change_pct < -2 and change < -0.5
Top 500 by turnover
More futures contracts open than on any day in three months — maximum positioning, whichever side it favours.
from fno where fut_oi is highest in 3mo
Top 500 by turnover
The front-month future paying more than half a percent over cash, in an uptrend — leverage leaning long.
from fno where fut_basis_pct > 0.5 and close > sma(50)
Top 500 by turnover
The front-month future trading below the cash price — hedging pressure, or supply the market expects.
from fno where fut_basis_pct < -0.2
Top 500 by turnover
Heavy put open interest under an uptrend — option sellers paid to defend the levels below.
from fno where pcr_oi > 0.8 and close > sma(50)
Top 500 by turnover
Call open interest dwarfing puts — optimism crowded enough to be worth distrusting.
from fno where pcr_oi < 0.4
Top 500 by turnover
Futures trading at 1.5× their own 20-day average — the leveraged desk suddenly interested.
from fno where fut_volume > 1.5x avg(fut_volume, 20)
Top 500 by turnover
Put volume above 0.7× call volume on the session — hedging or fear running through today's options tape.
from fno where pcr_vol > 0.7
Top 500 by turnover
Common questions
What is a long buildup?
A rising price with rising futures open interest. New contracts are being opened while price advances, which means fresh money is committing to the upside — as opposed to short covering, where price rises because existing shorts are buying back and OI falls.
What does the put-call ratio tell you?
How the option book is positioned. A high PCR means put open interest rivals calls — often put writers collecting premium, who then defend the strikes below. A very low PCR means the book is almost all calls: crowded optimism with little hedging underneath. Extremes on either side are conditions to notice, not directions to trade blindly.
Why is open interest in contracts rather than shares?
Because contracts are what NSE publishes, both before and after a lot-size revision. Converting to shares would require the historical lot size of every contract, which is not knowable for the older data — so the honest unit is the exchange's own, and comparisons are made against a stock's own history where the unit cancels out.