Traditional support is a price level where buyers have appeared before; the gamma flip is the price where dealer hedging changes character. They're different concepts — but the gamma flip often acts as a powerful support/resistance pivot, which is why they get conflated.
What support is
Support is a price-action level: a price where buying has historically emerged, so traders expect buyers again. Like resistance, it's backward-looking and partly self-fulfilling — useful, but based on past behavior rather than a mechanical reason. It marks where buyers showed up before, not why they would now.
What the gamma flip is
The gamma flip is a regime boundary: the price that separates positive-gamma (dealers damp volatility — dips bought, rips sold, stabilizing) from negative-gamma (dealers amplify volatility — moves accelerate). It's not primarily a support level — it's the line where the market's whole behavior changes. But it often acts as a pivot: above it, the stabilizing regime tends to hold price up (support-like); below it, the amplifying regime can accelerate declines (a break of “support” that runs). So it can behave like support/resistance while meaning something deeper.
Support tells you where buyers came before. The gamma flip tells you where the market's character flips from calm to violent — a regime line that happens to act like a pivot.
The quick takeaway
Not the same: support is a historical buyer level; the gamma flip is a dealer-hedging regime boundary that often acts as a powerful pivot. The flip's edge is that it tells you how the market will behave on each side, not just where buyers once were. NoVo maps the live gamma flip and which regime you're in — see the gamma-flip cross playbook.