This is a live chart of the Nifty at-the-money straddle — the combined premium of the ATM Call and the ATM Put at the same strike and the same expiry — plotted minute by minute from 09:15 to 15:40 IST. It is the single cleanest read on what Nifty options are pricing right now: holding both legs cancels direction and leaves only the market's cost of movement. Falling premium means theta decay is winning; rising premium means the market is paying up for volatility it now expects.
Nifty is the default, and the same chart runs for BANKNIFTY, FINNIFTY, MIDCPNIFTY, SENSEX and BANKEX on the equity side and for GOLD, SILVER, CRUDEOIL and NATURALGAS on MCX — switch from the symbol rail, or open a symbol's own page below. Nifty options trade on a 50-point strike grid, so the ATM strike rolls to the next 50 as spot moves and the line follows the roll rather than pinning to a stale strike. Free and public, with no login required.
A falling straddle line is the normal state of a quiet Nifty session. Both legs are bleeding theta, nothing is forcing a repricing, and the combined premium grinds down through the day. This is the pattern premium sellers are looking for, and it is most pronounced on expiry day when the remaining time value collapses into the close.
A rising straddle line means the opposite: the market is paying up for movement. Implied volatility is expanding faster than theta is decaying it away. That happens around scheduled events — RBI policy, the monthly inflation print, budget day, a large global gap — and it also happens when spot starts trending hard enough that gamma repricing overwhelms the decay.
The most useful signal is not the level but the shape. A straddle that refuses to decay through the middle of a flat session is telling you the market expects something the price action has not shown yet. A straddle that collapses faster than usual while spot chops is telling you volatility sellers are in control and the range is likely to hold.
The chart is not only intraday. The Range control prepends up to five archived sessions to today's line, so a Nifty straddle can be read across a whole expiry week — how much premium the market started with, and how it decayed session by session into expiry, with the ATM roll marked on every day.
Compare overlays any single past session on today's clock. Pick a date and that day's straddle is drawn against today's, minute for minute, so a slow-decaying morning can be checked against the last few sessions instead of remembered. The same-DTE cohort goes a step further: it draws the median path of the last five sessions with the same days to expiry, rebased onto today's open, with the range those sessions actually covered.
That is what turns a live line into a historical straddle chart. The archive is per symbol and per expiry, so the compared day is the same contract you are watching, and it carries its own strike in the tooltip so the two lines are never confused for one another.
Nifty weekly expiry is where the straddle chart earns its keep. Time value is the only thing left in an ATM option on expiry day, so the entire premium is decaying toward zero on a clock that everyone can see. The decay is not linear — it accelerates into the afternoon, and the last ninety minutes typically carry more of it than the whole morning.
The counterweight is gamma. On expiry day the ATM strike is enormously sensitive to spot, so a move of even fifty points can reprice the straddle violently against the decay. The chart shows both forces at once: the downward grind of theta, and the sharp vertical repricings when spot breaks a level. Seeing them separately on a single line is the point.
Watch what happens when spot crosses into a new 50-point band. The ATM strike rolls, and the straddle you are now looking at is a different contract pair than the one you were looking at a minute ago. The line stays continuous but the underlying instrument has changed — which is exactly why the chart tracks the ATM roll instead of a fixed strike.
Since 3 August 2026 the NSE and BSE cash markets have ended the day with a Closing Auction Session (CAS). Continuous trading in F&O stocks stops at 3:15 PM, the continuous Nifty print freezes with it, and for the next quarter of an hour the exchange publishes an indicative index value instead — the Nifty the auction would close at if it ended now. The official close prints from the matched auction, usually by 3:30 PM; index options keep trading until 3:40 PM. The window has been in the news since — the indicative Sensex fell more than 2,200 points and recovered inside nine minutes on the 27 August expiry, and the indicative Nifty printed below 23,400 on 8 September before closing at 23,635 — because the close now lands a long way from the 3:15 PM print.
The chart splits itself at that point. The left pane keeps the ATM straddle; the right pane draws the indicative Nifty second by second from its first print, so the premium can be read against the level that is actually moving rather than a spot that stopped at 3:15. On expiry day this is the whole game: the straddle's last twenty-five minutes are priced against the indicative, and the settlement print comes out of the auction.
The Indicative tile in the stats bar carries the same value all session and gains a CAS tag while the auction is running. Every recorded auction is kept, so the compare calendar draws a past session's indicative beside that day's straddle — and Nifty, BankNifty and Sensex each have a page of their own for the closing auction, opened on the indicative pane and holding the last recorded session outside the window.
Open the Nifty indicative price chart →The indices are not interchangeable. Nifty is the broadest and the most liquid, and its straddle is the cleanest benchmark for Indian equity volatility. BankNifty is narrower and more concentrated, so it carries structurally higher premium and reprices harder on banking news. FinNifty sits between the two — financial-sector exposure like BankNifty, but broadened by NBFCs and insurers, and noticeably thinner in the order book.
Sensex runs on a separate exchange with its own expiry calendar and its own participants, which means its straddle is priced independently rather than being a scaled copy of Nifty's. On a day that is expiry for one index and not the other, the two charts diverge sharply even though the underlying markets are moving together.
The MCX commodities are a different market entirely. Their session runs to roughly 23:30 IST rather than 15:40, so their straddles stay live across the US trading day, and what moves them — inventory data, OPEC, the dollar, real rates — is not on the Indian calendar at all.
Each symbol's chart plots the ATM straddle premium alongside the underlying — index spot for the equity symbols, the traded future for MCX, since MCX options are options on futures rather than on a cash index. A synthetic future derived from the ATM Call and Put gives the options-implied forward for the equity indices.
A live ATM±5 option chain sits beside every chart with the individual CE and PE prices and open interest that make up the straddle, so you can see whether a move came from one leg or both.
Straddle VWAP and adjustable EMA overlays are available as reference levels on any symbol, and the expiry chips on the rail switch between the available expiries for that contract.
The ATM straddle is the base structure underneath most neutral options strategies traded in India. A short straddle is this line sold outright. An iron butterfly is the same sale with protective wings bought. A short strangle moves the idea out to OTM strikes for wider breakevens and less premium.
That makes the chart useful as a live mark on any of them. Watching your entry level against the current line tells you immediately whether a premium-selling position is working, without recalculating anything.
It is also the honest test of whether a session was worth selling into. Premium that looked generous in the morning and is still near the same level in the afternoon was not decaying — it was compensating for risk that turned out to be real.
Free, no login · Straddle charts: NIFTY, BankNifty, FinNifty, MidcpNifty, Sensex, Bankex, Gold, Silver, Crude Oil, Natural Gas · Closing-auction indicative price: Nifty, BankNifty, Sensex · Content last reviewed September 2026