SMH open interest — latest available snapshot
SMH options open interest totalled 1,159,060 contracts across 13 expirations, settled on 2026-08-31 · SMH (the VanEck Semiconductor ETF) · front expiry 2026-09-02: 4,571 puts vs 3,461 calls · last price $543.18 on 2026-09-01
Latest available snapshot — open interest settled on 2026-08-31. This is a dated positioning read, not a live number. The static page is rebuilt nightly from the latest upstream chain available; intraday volume does not move open interest until the next settlement.
What did the 2026-08-31 snapshot show?
SMH carried 1,159,060 open option contracts across the 13 listed expirations inside 45 days. The front expiration, 2026-09-02, held 8,032 of them — 4,571 puts against 3,461 calls, a put/call ratio of 1.32. The heaviest single call strike (the call wall) sat at $572.5, +5.4% from the last price, and the heaviest put strike (the put wall) at $530, -2.4% away. Open interest counts open contracts, not intent: every contract has a buyer and a seller.
Heaviest strikes — 2026-09-02
The ten strikes holding the most combined open interest for the front expiration, among strikes within 15% of the max pain level (the window our nightly pipeline reports).
| Strike | Call OI | Put OI | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| $530 | 3 | 2,193 | 2,196 |
| $572.5 | 1,758 | 1 | 1,759 |
| $550 | 154 | 426 | 580 |
| $555 | 161 | 81 | 242 |
| $520 | 0 | 239 | 239 |
| $547.5 | 6 | 206 | 212 |
| $500 | 0 | 205 | 205 |
| $575 | 161 | 15 | 176 |
| $527.5 | 0 | 143 | 143 |
| $552.5 | 125 | 17 | 142 |
How concentrated is SMH open interest?
The 2026-08-31 snapshot's top-ten figure for SMH applies only to the headline 2026-09-02 expiration and only to the 66 reported strikes within 15% of max pain; it is not full-chain concentration. The wall-to-wall distance was 7.8% of the settled last price and also belongs to that expiration. Only the expiration-share figures use all 1,159,060 contracts across the 13 listed expirations inside 45 days. Read the wall distance as a same-expiration strike gap, and the expiration shares as how the reported chain's contracts were distributed across listed expirations. Chain-wide, the 2026-09-18 expiration was the largest bucket, holding 53.5% of the 1,159,060 contracts counted across the 45-day window. Every figure is derived from open-interest counts — what open interest measures, and how it differs from volume explains how those counts are created, destroyed and settled once a day. A crowded strike means many contracts exist there; it does not mean price is drawn to it or repelled by it. Before assigning meaning to either wall, read our guide to what call and put walls can — and cannot — tell you; it explains why a crowded strike is a concentration marker, not support, resistance or a price target.
SMH open interest by expiration
| Expiration | Call OI | Put OI | Total | Call wall | Put wall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-02 | 3,461 | 4,571 | 8,032 | $572.5 | $530 |
| 2026-09-03 | 691 | 1,659 | 2,350 | $570 | $530 |
| 2026-09-04 | 41,323 | 179,159 | 220,482 | $600 | $415 |
| 2026-09-08 | 413 | 10,487 | 10,900 | $587.5 | $430 |
| 2026-09-09 | 162 | 829 | 991 | $557.5 | $542.5 |
| 2026-09-10 | 105 | 388 | 493 | $570 | $510 |
| 2026-09-11 | 14,903 | 18,524 | 33,427 | $570 | $530 |
| 2026-09-14 | 44 | 34 | 78 | $560 | $500 |
| 2026-09-18 | 226,675 | 393,246 | 619,921 | $600 | $400 |
| 2026-09-25 | 10,359 | 8,460 | 18,819 | $630 | $490 |
| 2026-10-02 | 9,723 | 7,693 | 17,416 | $580 | $490 |
| 2026-10-09 | 495 | 1,340 | 1,835 | $562.5 | $545 |
| 2026-10-16 | 109,157 | 115,159 | 224,316 | $700 | $450 |
The same SMH chain, other lenses
These counts feed every other SMH page here. SMH max pain turns them into the settlement price that would pay option holders the least — that page also charts this distribution strike by strike; SMH put/call ratio tracks the puts-to-calls balance daily; SMH gamma exposure estimates dealer positioning against the same book.
Common questions
How much SMH open interest was outstanding in the latest snapshot?
Using open interest settled at the close on 2026-08-31, SMH carried 1,159,060 option contracts across the 13 listed expirations inside 45 days. The front expiration, 2026-09-02, held 8,032 of them: 4,571 puts and 3,461 calls.
What is open interest?
Open interest is the number of option contracts that exist and have not yet been closed, exercised or expired. It is not trading volume: a contract that changes hands ten times in a day still counts once. Every contract has a buyer and a seller, so open interest says how many positions are open, not which side anyone is on.
What are the SMH call wall and put wall?
They are simply the strikes holding the most call and put open interest for an expiration — $572.5 and $530 respectively in this snapshot. The count says where contracts are concentrated; whether price respects those levels is a separate empirical question the count itself cannot answer. The guide at quantdata.uk/guides/call-wall-put-wall explains how to read them without treating them as support or resistance.
Is SMH open interest concentrated in a few strikes?
In the 2026-08-31 snapshot the ten heaviest strikes held 74.4% of the 7,919 contracts inside the reported window — the 66 strikes within 15% of max pain that we publish, not the full chain. The put wall sat at $530 and the call wall at $572.5, 7.8% apart measured against the last price. Chain-wide, 2026-09-18 was the heaviest of the 13 listed expirations at 53.5% of all 1,159,060 contracts. These are contract counts. They show concentration, not whether price will be attracted to or repelled by a strike.
When does SMH open interest update?
The clearing house settles open interest once per trading day, after the close. This page is rebuilt nightly from that end-of-day file, so no figure here — or anywhere — is a live intraday open-interest reading.