What Are NSE OI Spurts
NSE OI Spurts is a daily report published by the National Stock Exchange that flags F&O contracts — stock futures, index futures, and select options — where open interest has jumped sharply against its recent average. "Spurt" just means a sudden, unusually large build-up in open interest, not a fixed percentage NSE publishes as a rule.
Key takeaway: An OI Spurts listing shows you where big new positions are being built right now. It doesn't tell you whether those positions are bullish or bearish, or who's building them.
NSE puts this report out under its Reports section (Market Data > Reports > Derivatives) after each session closes. If you're not yet clear on what open interest itself means, read our piece "What Is Open Interest (OI) in the Stock Market? Explained With Examples" first — this page assumes you already have that basic idea and builds on it.
How OI Spurts Are Calculated
- NSE tracks each contract's OI every session. For every stock future, index future, and tracked option contract, the exchange records the day's closing open interest.
- It compares today's OI to a recent baseline. This is usually the average OI over the past several sessions, not just yesterday's number in isolation — smoothing out a single noisy day.
- Contracts with an unusual jump get flagged. If today's OI sits well above that baseline, the contract lands on the OI Spurts list, sorted by the size of the jump.
- A worked example. Say Reliance Industries futures averaged 42 lakh contracts in open interest over the past week. On a Thursday, OI jumps to 54 lakh contracts — roughly 28% above the baseline. That's a spurt. It appears on the report with its percentage change, so you don't have to track OI across hundreds of contracts by hand to spot it.
How to Read the NSE OI Spurts Report
The exact column labels can shift slightly between report versions, but every version carries the same core information:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Symbol | The underlying stock or index the contract belongs to |
| Expiry | Which futures/options series — current month, next month, and so on |
| Latest OI | Today's closing open interest, in number of contracts |
| Average OI | The recent baseline NSE compares against |
| % Change in OI | How far latest OI has jumped above that baseline — the column the report is sorted by |
| LTP | Last traded price of the contract |
| % Change in Price | The price move for the same session, so you can read OI and price together |
Reading the report is really about that last pair of columns together. A contract sitting at the top for % change in OI tells you where the action is; the price-change column next to it tells you which direction the market moved while that action happened.
How Traders Use OI Spurts
An OI Spurt on its own is just a bigger version of a build-up you'd see anyway — it still falls into one of four combinations depending on what price did in the same session.
Long buildup
New money is entering on the long side. Traders are opening fresh long positions, expecting higher prices.
Short buildup
New money is entering on the short side. Traders are opening fresh short positions, expecting lower prices.
Short covering
Existing short positions are being closed out as price rises — not fresh buying.
Long unwinding
Existing long positions are being closed out as price falls — not fresh selling.
Take Priya, a Mumbai-based equity investor moving into derivatives for the first time. She checks the OI Spurts report and sees Nifty futures near the top of the list, OI up sharply, price also up about 1.2% for the session. Read against the grid above, that combination points to long buildup — fresh money entering on the long side, not shorts getting squeezed out. It's still just one data point. It doesn't tell her why that money came in, or whether it's a hedge, an institutional flow, or pure speculation, and it isn't a signal to open a position of her own.
Two limits are worth keeping in mind before leaning on this report. First, it's an end-of-day snapshot, not a live feed — OI can keep shifting through the next session before the report updates again. Second, near contract expiry, OI naturally moves as traders roll positions from the expiring series into the next month, which can show up as a spurt that has nothing to do with fresh directional conviction. Checking the expiry column against the calendar before reading too much into a jump avoids that trap.
Common Misunderstandings
A stock on the OI Spurts list means a big price move is about to happen.
A spurt shows unusual position build-up, not the timing or direction of a future move — plenty of spurts fizzle out with no follow-through.
OI Spurts only cover index futures.
The report covers stock futures and select options contracts too, not just the index.
A high % OI change always means bullish activity.
Direction depends on what price does alongside OI. Rising OI with falling price is a short buildup, not a bullish sign.
You should copy whatever shows up on the spurts list.
The list shows where activity is building, not who's building it. Retail, institutional, and hedging flows all show up the same way on the report.