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Additional Info

How Greeks Are Calculated

Option Greeks measure an option's sensitivity to changes in the underlying price, time, volatility, and interest rates. Public calculates Greeks and implied volatility in real time, in-house — they are not sourced from a third party. Market data used as input comes from our market data provider.

Pricing model

Greeks are computed with the Black–Scholes model. Implied volatility is solved by inverting the Bjerksund–Stensland (2002) approximation, which accounts for dividends and early exercise.

GreeksBlack–Scholes (European exercise)
Implied volatilityBjerksund–Stensland 2002 inversion (American exercise; accounts for dividends and early exercise)
DividendsContinuous dividend yield

Implied volatility

Option price usedMidpoint, (bid + ask) / 2, with fallback to last trade when a two-sided quote isn’t available
SolverHybrid Newton–Raphson / Brent root-find — Newton–Raphson for fast convergence, falling back to bracketing + Brent for robustness

The bracketing + Brent fallback also handles edge cases such as near-zero volatility and numerical instability.

Time to expiration

ConventionCalendar days between now and expiration, divided by 365.25
0DTE floorFloored at 0.000002 years (≈63 seconds) so Greeks remain finite as the contract approaches expiration

Note this is a calendar-time clock, not a trading-time (252-day / market-hours) clock.

The Greeks

Δ

Delta

Measures: Sensitivity to a $1 change in the underlying price.

The theoretical estimate of how much an option's value may change given a $1 move up or down in the underlying security. Values range from -1 to +1, with 0 representing an option whose premium barely moves relative to price changes in the underlying.

Γ

Gamma

Measures: Rate of change of delta per $1 move in the underlying.

Represents the rate of change between an option's delta and the underlying asset's price. Higher gamma values indicate that delta could change dramatically with even small price changes in the underlying.

Θ

Theta

Measures: Sensitivity to the passage of time (time decay).

Indicates the amount an option's price would decrease as the time to expiration decreases, all else equal. Time is measured using the calendar-time convention described above.

ν

Vega

Measures: Sensitivity to a 1% change in implied volatility.

Measures the amount of increase or decrease in an option premium based on a 1% (one volatility point) change in implied volatility.

ρ

Rho

Measures: Sensitivity to a 1% change in interest rates.

Represents the rate of change between an option's value and a 1% change in the interest rate.

Accessing Greeks on the API

Greeks are returned as part of the greeks object — containing delta, gamma, theta, vega, rho, and impliedVolatility — in two places:

  • The Get option greeks endpoint, which accepts a list of option symbols in the OSI-normalized format (max 250 contracts per request).
  • Option quotes, under optionDetails.greeks.

📝 Notes

  • Greeks are calculated in real time by Public — no third party is used for the Greek calculations themselves.
  • Exercise assumptions differ by output: European (Black–Scholes) for the Greeks, American (Bjerksund–Stensland) for implied volatility.