Net premium (options flow)
Net premium is the dollar premium of option trades signed by the directional intent inferred from each print: bought calls and sold puts count as bullish, sold calls and bought puts as bearish. It condenses a session's flow into one directional money figure, and inherits every uncertainty of the side and opening-or-closing inferences.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
At a glance
- Bullish (+)
- Calls bought at the ask, puts sold at the bid
- Bearish (−)
- Calls sold at the bid, puts bought at the ask
- Excluded
- Prints without an identifiable side
The sign convention
Premium is price × size × multiplier, always positive. Net premium adds a sign based on the view a print appears to express. Buying a call or selling a put gains when the underlying rises, so both count positive; selling a call or buying a put gains when it falls, so both count negative. Total premium measures activity, net premium the direction of that activity as inferred from the tape.
Worked example
A put/call premium ratio on the same prints would be 250,000 / 250,000 = 1.00, which looks neutral, while net premium leans bullish. The two measures answer different questions.
| Prints | Premium | Sign | Net contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calls bought | 200,000 dollars | + | +200,000 dollars |
| Puts sold | 100,000 dollars | + | +100,000 dollars |
| Puts bought | 150,000 dollars | − | −150,000 dollars |
| Calls sold | 50,000 dollars | − | −50,000 dollars |
| Total | 500,000 dollars | +100,000 dollars (20% of total) |
What it cannot tell you
- Opening or closing: a call bought to close a short call is counted bullish, although it removes a bearish position rather than adding a bullish one.
- Spreads: the legs of a package are signed separately and can cancel, or exaggerate, the package's real view.
- Hedges: a put bought to protect a stock portfolio is counted bearish even if the holder is net long.
- Premium is not exposure: 100,000 dollars of deep in-the-money calls carries far more delta than 100,000 dollars of far out-of-the-money calls.
In Senzoukria
Option Flow applies this convention in two places. The top contracts list, titled Where the money went, ranks contracts by total premium and shows how far each one leans, net premium as a share of total, with a band of ±15% treated as mixed. The concentration grid, Where the premium is landing, colours each strike and expiry by signed net premium. Prints whose side is mid or unknown are excluded from the net and counted separately rather than split. The Buy / Sell flow card shows premium by aggressor side and states the premium that had no side.
Related
In the same section
- Neutral day
- Negative gamma regime
- News trading restriction
- NBBO
- Non-professional status
- Naked POC
- Notional value
- Multi-leg trade
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Frequently asked questions
- Is positive net premium bullish for futures?
- It says that, by the tape's inferred signs, more premium was spent on bullish-looking structures than bearish ones in the window. It does not reveal opening or closing, hedges or packages, and it has no established predictive value by itself. Treat it as a description of flow to test against price.
- How is net premium different from hedging pressure?
- Net premium weights each print by dollars spent; hedging pressure weights it by delta and size. A cheap far out-of-the-money call adds little to either, but a costly deep in-the-money call adds much more to pressure per dollar than an at-the-money one.