Anyone have an opinion on if and how max pain levels come into play? Max Pain for QQQ is 23.00 Max Pain for OEX is 445.00 I am a strong believer in max pain levels, although I don't hang my hat on any of it and I certainly wouldn't make a trade purely on that information.....
Max pain (also called minimum outstanding expiration value) shows some validity as long as the underlying's price is within a reasonable distance of the minimum valuation target. It doesn't work universally. Some people think it's like a gravity point that prices will always tend to - except it's the gravity of a small asteroid not a black hole. If price is too far away from the target area, then the specialists will have already laid off their exposure. But if the current price is within reasonable reach, then you'll often see a tendency to try to peg the final print as close as possible to the minimum valuation target.