Narration: AI voice.
Two ratios, one close
Same index, same close, two put/call ratios. Nifty, end of day 15 Oct 2026: 1.37 across all open expiries, 1.66 for the nearest one. Both are right. They answer different questions. Here is how to read the ratio properly: which count, which expiry, compared to what, and what it cannot tell you.
Open interest or volume
The definition first. A put/call ratio is puts divided by calls. Above one, more puts than calls. Below one, fewer. That is all the arithmetic says. The real question is: puts and calls counted how? Two counts, two different ratios. Open interest is the number of contracts still open at the settlement: a stock of positions. Volume is the number of contracts traded during the session: a flow. The India pages use open interest: put open interest over call open interest, in units, from the exchange's end-of-day file. The learn page's definition uses volume: puts traded over calls traded. One describes what stays open. The other describes what changed hands today. So the two can disagree on the same day, about the same ticker. The US side here is volume. The flow board has a put/call volume ratio for each ticker and expiry, as of Oct 15, 2026, 16:14 ET, delayed at least fifteen minutes, in the strikes it tracks. Every row is a session total for one ticker and one expiry, not a trade. Top row on this capture: BAC Jan 19, 2029, ratio 38.15. Hold that row. It comes back.
One expiry or all
Now scope: one expiry, or all of them. The Nifty page lists every open expiry with its own ratio. Nearest, 19 Oct 2026: 1.66. Next, 27 Oct 2026: 1.11. Then 3 Nov 2026: 0.94. The all-expiries figure is total put open interest, about 357 million, over total call open interest, about 261.3 million. It blends a weekly series a few days from expiry with contracts months out. Quote a Nifty ratio without its expiry and nobody knows which number you mean.
What moved it
What moves it? Either side of the fraction. The OI page shows where. On this close, put open interest went up about 102.2 million units, call open interest down about 19.9 million. Biggest additions, all puts: the 22,900 put, plus about 8.3 million. The 22,700 put, plus about 8 million. The 22,500 put, plus about 7.8 million. Biggest unwinds, both calls: the 22,700 call, minus about 8.6 million. The 22,800 call, minus about 6.5 million. On the page, PE is a put and CE a call, and the counts use Indian digit grouping. Numerator up, denominator down, and the ratio rises. The page describes where open interest sits. It does not say who added it, or why. And the history table: nearest-expiry ratio 0.85 on 14 Oct 2026, 1.66 on 15 Oct 2026. One session apart. Two things to know about that column. It follows whichever series is nearest, so after every expiry it switches contracts. And the calendar moves too: Nifty weeklies expire on Tuesday, and when that day is a trading holiday the contract expires the trading day before. The coming Tuesday, the twentieth, is Dussehra, so that weekly expires Monday the nineteenth.
Against its own history
Next rule: compare a reading to its own history, not to one line for every market. The US snapshots are built that way. One, as of Oct 15, 2026, 14:41 ET: BAC puts expiring February nineteenth, 2027 traded 5.1x the calls, against a 0.9x median. That median is BAC's own recent put/call volume ratio for contracts more than three months out. The board's other snapshots each carry their own ticker's median, and they differ. A single threshold for all of them would ignore that.
Thin cells
Now read the contract counts before the ratio. That top row: 8,736 puts against 229 calls gives 38.15. A ratio is only as steady as its smaller side: when that side is small, move it a little and the ratio moves a lot. Separately, the page withholds any put or call side built on fewer than three traded contracts, and a ratio needs both sides, so those cells are hidden. On this capture, 12 cells.
No direction
Last: a ratio carries no direction. The flow page gives the reason plainly: calls can be sold, and puts can hedge stock. A chain cannot show whether a contract was opened or closed, or whether it was one leg of a spread. Some traders read an extreme ratio as a contrarian signal; the learn page describes that reading. These data pages make no such claim. The Nifty page says it outright: the ratio describes positioning at the close, and it is not a signal.
Wrap
So, four questions before any put/call ratio. Open interest or volume? One expiry or all of them? Against its own history, or against nothing? And how big is the smaller side? Then the limit: no direction, and no who. The definition is on the learn page linked below. Educational only.
Full write-up with sources: /learn/put-call-ratio-explained
Educational content, not investment advice.
Levels shown are as captured on 2026-10-16 01:46 ET; they are not current.