The Swing Book

What it answers

Where the book sits over the next few weeks.

The Map answers today. THE LONG BOOK answers the part of the chain still standing in six months. THE SWING BOOK is the middle: the weeks you actually hold a swing position for.

It reads open interest across every live expiry at once, weighted the way Compass weights its slow lens, so the eight to thirty day band counts full and same-day counts a tenth. That weighting is the whole reason it is a swing read and not a restatement of the Map.

It reads the recorded book, not the live chain. So it answers after the bell, at weekends, and on a name whose chain is refusing. If a name is too new to have five banked sessions behind it, the card says so and says why, rather than drawing nothing.

The line at the top

THE READ. Added 12 September 2026, and it is the only block on this card written to be acted on rather than studied.

Everything else describes the board. THE READ says what the board is offering, in one paragraph, in this order:

• the side, if the board has one
• the level in that direction that actually carries size, and how far that is
• how often price has reached that far inside a week, measured
• the level that ends the read, and how far back it sits

It says those distances in percent, not in moves. The ladder below it does the reverse, and that is deliberate: a column is scanned and a sentence is read. The reach word on the line is already the move count made meaningful, so printing both would say the same thing twice, once in a unit nobody says out loud.

And it closes on the line you act on. Everything before it is geometry. The last sentence assembles that geometry into one conditional: a level to act at, what the book points to if that level gives, and what says the read is over.

While 336 holds, 350 is this week's level, and 400 is where the weight sits further out. Below 336 invalidates the read.

750 is the only level inside a week's reach. Acceptance through it is the trigger. 800 is too far to matter this week.

Both 730 and 700 are live this week. The first one accepted through is the trigger, and there is nothing to take before that.

A watch this week, not a position yet. The levels are there, the distance is not.

That last one is not the card giving up. Saying there is nothing here is an instruction, and it is the one most worth having, because the expensive mistake is rarely the trade you missed. Note what it does not say: it does not say the board is empty. It says the levels are real and the distance is not this week's, which is a different thing and the reason the word is yet.

Where, how far, and where you are wrong. That is a frame, and a frame is the thing a position can be sized against.

Every number in it already appears somewhere else on the card. The block exists because a reading a member has to assemble out of four sections is a reading that does not get used before the open.

Four kinds of board, four lines. Two horizons that agree. One that leans while the other is even. Two that disagree. And a board with no side at all. The last two are the common case on real tape, so they get a usable sentence rather than an apology: a board with no side still has gates, and which one gets accepted through first is a thing worth waiting for.

What it will not do. It names no entry day. It names no strike, because THE CONTRACT does strikes. And it carries no probability of direction. Reach is the one rate on the line and it is a rate about distance, not about which way. Those two only get confused when a sentence puts them side by side, so this one keeps them in separate clauses.

The words on it

The hinge

The gamma flip and the balance point, taken as a pair. Two independently recorded levels that usually sit within a fraction of a normal day of each other, so the card names them once instead of twice.

Four states, and they are all facts about two numbers:

• On the hinge. Price closed within a quarter of a normal day of both. Neither side has it. This is the two-sided case.
• Above the hinge and below the hinge. Price closed clear of both, on one side.
• Straddling the hinge. Price closed between them.

When the flip sits further than one move and a half from price it is withheld rather than drawn, because a ladder edge reported as a flip is a confident lie. The hinge is then the balance point alone, and the card says so.

One move

One standard deviation of price over the window named on the card, which is twenty-eight days here.

Built from the implied volatility the tape banked for that window where it has one, and from the name's own average daily range where it does not. The card tells you which, every time, because a move built from a daily range is a different claim from one the options market is quoting.

It is a scale, not a boundary. Price goes further than one move about a third of the time.

It replaced the word sigma, which is a statistician's unit nobody reads off a screen.

In moves

Each level's distance from price in one-move units, instead of in dollars or percent.

A level 0.40 moves away is close on any name. A level 4.85 moves away is a long way off on any name. A percentage cannot tell you that without you already knowing the name.

This column exists to stop one specific mistake, which is the easiest way there is to misread a swing board: a very large pile sitting a long way out is not a price target. It is usually insurance. The card says so where it happens, and the column is there so it cannot be misread by accident.

Reach

Whether price can get to a level. Measured on our own record, not calculated.

A level was placed a given number of moves either side of every recorded close, and the next five sessions' highs and lows were checked for a touch. 169 banked sessions across 20 names.

It answers one week. The card says so rather than leaving the window to be assumed. The four-week answer this room's title implies needs more record than the archive holds yet, and it is banking nightly.

Six words carry it: very likely, likely, possible, a stretch, unlikely, rarely reached.

The last one used to read out of reach, and that was wrong in a way worth naming. The record does not say price cannot get there. It says price gets there occasionally and not often, which is a different sentence and a more useful one. A door that is rarely opened is not a wall.

Past half a move, the number of touches behind the estimate falls under this house's forty-event floor. So the word still prints and the percentage is withheld. A wide bucket survives a thin sample. A number does not.

The gates

The two levels a two-sided board turns on, one above price and one below. Each is the nearest level within two moves that carries real size.

Acceptance through one of them is the trigger. A wick through is not.

Each road names up to three levels rather than one. Until 16 September 2026 the card computed every level standing on each side and then printed only the heaviest, so a member saw one and the board knew five. Three is a density judgement and not a measurement. The limit doing the real work is two moves, which is already where this product stops calling something reachable: past that the reach words stop separating, and a fourth row would be a wall of numbers saying the same thing three times.

A gate is not always the week's level. A gate is the heaviest level near price. When it sits further out than price has gone in five sessions, the card names the nearest level with real size that price can actually reach instead, and says which is which. GOOGL on 11 September had its weight at 400, eighteen percent up and rarely reached inside a week, with 350 sitting a third of a move away carrying more of the ladder than anything else nearby. The far pile is where the book's weight is and is still the interesting part of the board. It is simply not a week's level.

Where one gate is inside a week's reach and the other is not, the card says which, and that is a statement about distance and never about direction. Where neither is inside a week's reach it says that too, which makes the name one to watch rather than one to size that week. Where price is standing on a gate it says that instead, because that outranks any comparison between the two.

The road higher and the road lower

The two ladders, above price and below it, with price's own row between them. Each runs outward from price and carries a dashed line where one move ends, so everything past that line is further out than a normal window.

Teal is above price, rust below. On this board colour carries side and nothing else. Amber is spent only on the session's recorded King and on the one-move boundary: this board is every live expiry at once, so it has no King of its own, and its heaviest strike is only that.

Every rung carries its own reach, in a column headed reach, 1wk, so a level's distance and how often this name has actually travelled that far sit on the same line. Two levels can sit four rows apart looking identical when one has been reached in a bit over half of recorded sessions and the other in three in a hundred.

And the card says so above them now, in one line:

Where size sits above and below price, in the order price would meet it. Each level carries how far it is and how often this name has reached that far inside a week. Reaching one is a thing that has happened; going there is a thing the board cannot say.

That last clause is the difference between naming a level and claiming one. The levels are where size is. The frequency is what the record says about travelling that far. Neither one is a forecast, and a list of levels printed without that column would be a claim wearing a description's clothes.

THE CONTRACT

The last section. It names:

• the listed expiry between thirty and sixty days out with the most open interest behind it
• the two strikes the chain lists either side of price
• what a call and a put at each would cost

Prices are modeled, not quoted. The chain Compass reads carries volatility and open interest and no bid, so each price is built from that strike's own implied volatility. The section says so where the number is.

Under thirty days it declines and explains why, rather than shortening its own window to have something to show. Inside a month a long option is a different instrument from a swing position, and that is the reason the floor exists.

It names no entry day, and no direction beyond the lean above it.

Tested, not established

A confidence label, and it means what it says: a claim was measured and the measurement did not clear the bar.

It sits beside the lean's hit rate. On the sessions behind it, a board closing with its nearest expiry leaning one way saw the level a quarter of a normal day on that side reached first the next session about four times in a hundred more often than on an average day. Shuffling those outcomes four thousand times produced a gap that big between thirty-six and forty-five times in a hundred. The usual bar is under five in a hundred.

So the sign is right and nothing beyond that can be claimed yet.

The lean itself is different. It is a count of where size sits, and a count needs no test.

What the room will not do

It will not tell you which way price goes. It will not name an entry day. It will not claim that price is drawn to a heavy strike, because that was tested on our own record and structure like that behaves no better than a coin.

What it gives you is the month, the neighborhood, where each road meets size, what would end the read, and the size discipline. THE READ at the top is that same answer compressed into one paragraph, and it is the part to read first. Which road, and which day earns it, stays with you.