Scalping SPY 0DTE options comes with a thick vocabulary. Here are 40 essential terms in plain English — a quick-reference glossary linking to deeper explanations. Bookmark it and use it whenever a term trips you up.
Options basics
1. Call — the right to buy; a bet price rises. 2. Put — the right to sell; a bet price falls. 3. Strike — the price the option is tied to. 4. Premium — the option's price (and your max loss when buying). 5. Multiplier — one contract = 100 shares. 6. DTE — days to expiration; 0DTE expires today. 7. ITM / OTM — in-the-money (has intrinsic value) / out-of-the-money (no intrinsic value). 8. Expire worthless — finish OTM with no value left.
The greeks & pricing
9. Delta — option move per $1 in SPY; rough odds of finishing ITM. 10. Theta — daily time decay. 11. Gamma — how fast delta changes. 12. Vega — sensitivity to volatility. 13. Implied volatility (IV) — the market's forward-looking vol, priced into options. 14. Historical volatility (HV) — realized past movement. 15. IV crush — IV collapsing after an event. 16. Intrinsic / extrinsic value — the ITM amount / the time-and-vol premium.
Dealer levels & structure
17. GEX — gamma exposure; dealer hedging pressure. 18. Net GEX — signed net that sets the regime. 19. Positive / negative gamma — dealers damp / amplify moves. 20. Gamma flip — the price where the regime changes. 21. Call wall — heavy call strike that caps upside. 22. Put wall — heavy put strike that supports downside. 23. Gravity — the |gamma|-weighted magnet price. 24. VWAP — volume-weighted average price; intraday fair value. 25. Expected move — the market's priced-in daily range (~1 SD). 26. Pin — price held near a big strike by hedging.
Price action & the tape
27. The tape — the live stream of trades. 28. Opening range — the first 30 minutes' high/low. 29. Above/below VWAP — buyers vs. sellers in control. 30. Reclaim — winning back a lost level. 31. Failed breakdown — a break that reverses, trapping shorts. 32. Chop — directionless, noisy range. 33. Liquidity void — a thin zone price races through. 34. Lifting the offer — aggressive buying at the ask. 35. Sweep — aggressive multi-exchange order.
Execution & risk
36. Fill — your order executing into a position. 37. Bid-ask spread — the gap between buy and sell prices; a cost. 38. Slippage — the difference between expected and filled price. 39. Boundaries — your hard, pre-set risk limits. 40. R (R-multiple) — your risk per trade, the unit that makes results comparable.
Learn the vocabulary and the market gets quieter — the wall of jargon becomes a set of tools you can actually use. Forty terms, and you can read the whole game.
Putting it together
These 40 terms cover the language of SPY 0DTE scalping — the options basics, the greeks, the dealer levels, the tape, and the risk concepts. Each links to a deeper dive when you want more. NoVo's whole job is to turn this vocabulary into a live, actionable picture: it reads the tape and maps every dealer level, so the terms in this glossary become a real-time cockpit rather than just definitions. Start with the words; let the structure do the rest.