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By VolRadar Editorial · published Jun 2026
The put/call ratio is one of the oldest options-market balance metrics. It compares how many put contracts traded against how many call contracts over a period — usually a single trading day. Because puts are most often associated with downside positioning and calls with upside positioning, the ratio is read as a rough gauge of the balance of options activity. It is a descriptive market-structure statistic, not a directional forecast or a trade recommendation.
VolRadar’s headline figure is the Equity Put/Call Ratio: it covers the tracked single-stock universe — the several hundred individual US equities VolRadar follows. It is an equity (single-stock) measure by design. Index and ETF options — including broad-market products like those on the S&P 500 — are not blended into this headline number, because index and single-stock flow behave differently and mixing them would blur the read. A dedicated index/ETF variant is tracked separately as a future addition rather than folded in here.
For each qualifying trading day we aggregate across the included universe:
Equity PCR = Σ(put volume across symbols) ÷ Σ(call volume across symbols)This is a volume-weighted aggregate, not a simple average of per-symbol ratios — summing the raw contract counts first means a heavily traded name contributes in proportion to its actual activity, rather than every symbol counting equally regardless of size. The result is a single number for the whole tracked equity universe on that day.
We publish two flavours of the ratio:
Showing both side by side separates “what changed hands today” from “what is already on the books” — a single day’s flow can lean one way while the standing book leans the other.
A trading day only becomes a published data point once enough of the tracked universe has reported clean put and call volume. We apply a data-quality coverage gate: a session qualifies when it includes at least 450 symbols and covers 85% or more of the tracked universe for that date. Days that fall short — early in the data history, or when a vendor file is partial — are held back rather than published on thin coverage, so the ratio is never computed on a lopsided sample.
Because the verified daily history is still accumulating, the tool itself stays out of the search index until it has built up a sufficient run of qualifying sessions; the live reading is shown to visitors throughout.
Alongside the current day we show a trailing five-session average of the volume ratio. A single day can be noisy — an expiration, a large single-name event or a holiday-shortened session can push the ratio around. Averaging the last five qualifying sessions gives a steadier baseline to compare the current reading against.
The interactive chart overlays the cumulative return of SPY (an S&P 500 ETF) across the same sessions, on a separate right-hand axis. This is shown purely as market context — so a reader can see how the equity put/call balance has moved alongside the broad market — and is clearly labelled as a cumulative return. It is not combined with the ratio into any single score.
Several venues publish their own put/call ratios. Cboe, for example, publishes index-based and total ratios derived from activity on its own exchange. VolRadar’s number is a different measure: it is computed independently by VolRadar across a tracked universe of single-stock equities, from end-of-day ORATS data — not an exchange-published index ratio, and not a count of every contract traded across all venues. The two answer related but distinct questions, so they should not be expected to match.
For single-stock equity flow, readings below 1.0 are common — call activity frequently outweighs put activity across individual names. So the useful comparison is usually the current reading against its own recent range and the five-session average, rather than against a fixed line. The orientation bands on the tool (more call-heavy, roughly balanced, more put-heavy) are descriptive labels for where the day sits, not buy-or-sell instructions. The ratio describes the balance of activity; it does not, on its own, identify trader type, intent, or what happens next.
The ratio is recomputed once per trading day, after the US market close, from end-of-day option data. We do not publish a live-tick or by-the-second feed; the figure is an after-close daily aggregate. Underlying option data is sourced from ORATS.
Source: VolRadar analysis of ORATS data.
The put/call ratio is a coarse balance metric. It cannot tell you whether a put was bought or sold, whether it opened or closed a position, or whether it was a hedge against stock — so the same number can arise from very different underlying intentions. We treat it as context, never as a standalone signal. If a published figure later proves to have been computed on an incomplete vendor file, we re-run the affected session and update the value; material changes are reflected in the data shown.