Every F&O stock in one treemap, sized by futures notional and coloured by its Long/Short Buildup classification.
A spot heatmap tells you which stocks went up or down. A futures heatmap tells you why. Strota's futures heatmap colours each F&O stock by its OI buildup classification — Long Buildup, Short Covering, Short Buildup, or Long Unwinding — instead of just by today's price change. The result is a smart-money read at a glance: you can see where fresh longs are being added, where shorts are being covered, where new shorts are piling in.
If the spot heatmap is 'what is moving', the futures heatmap is 'what is being positioned around'.
Long Buildup (green) — price rose and futures open interest rose. New buyers are entering at higher prices. The strongest bullish signal a futures market can give.
Short Covering (pale green) — price rose but open interest fell. Existing shorts are closing out. Bullish but less so than Long Buildup; short-covering rallies often lack follow-through.
Short Buildup (red) — price fell and open interest rose. New short positions are being added on weakness. Bearish — often precedes further downside.
Long Unwinding (pale red) — price fell and open interest fell. Existing longs are exiting. Bearish but less so than Short Buildup; the move lacks fresh-conviction selling.
Strota's classification uses total OI across all expiries, not just the front-month contract. This avoids expiry-week rollover noise where front-month OI collapses simply because positions roll forward.
Cells are sized by today's futures traded value (₹) — the contracts that actually changed hands. Stocks where derivatives traders are heavily active get the most pixels. A small cell with deep Long Buildup green is a less-followed stock with quiet but real accumulation; a giant cell with pale red is the day's most-traded name drifting on long unwinding.
Combining colour and size in one view is what makes Strota's futures heatmap different from the standard 'sized by market cap' versions.
Pre-market: Scan for clusters. If most of the index is dark green (Long Buildup), the prior session set up a constructive open. If half the cells are pale red (Long Unwinding), expect chop.
During session: Look for stocks shifting categories. A stock that was Long Buildup yesterday and Short Buildup today is reversing — worth a closer look on its per-stock page.
Post-market: Note the persistent leaders. Stocks with multi-session Long Buildup are accumulation candidates; persistent Short Buildup is a warning to be cautious on longs.
The regular heatmap colours cells by raw price change. The futures heatmap colours by smart-money positioning interpretation (the OI buildup category), and sizes by futures notional rather than spot traded value. They tell complementary stories.
Only stocks in the F&O segment are eligible — roughly 200 stocks. If a name is on the spot heatmap but missing here, it doesn't have listed futures.
On expiry-week days, the near-month contract's OI collapses purely because positions roll forward to the next month. Front-month-only metrics would falsely flag every F&O stock as 'Long Unwinding' during expiry week. Aggregated OI sees the rollover as a wash and reads the actual positioning change.
Once per trading day, after end-of-day derivatives data is published around 6:30 PM IST. The classification reflects EOD positioning, not intraday.