ETH 2300 Put OI Spikes by Z-Score, Not by Size — Tape Stays Quiet
ETH's 2300 put (11-03 expiry) flagged a z=20.6 OI move overnight — the sharpest relative shift on the board. The absolute numbers tell a different story: just 21 put contracts changed and the taker tape logged only 7 trades totaling $770 in premium ($371.76 bought vs $397.48 sold), netting out to "balanced" over 24h despite a 0.60 buyer-aggression reading in the most recent hour. That's noise-level flow for a z-score this extreme.
Context from neighboring strikes on the same expiry makes the contrast obvious:
| Strike | Call Δ (24h) | Put Δ (24h) |
|---|---|---|
| 2150 | 0 | 1,010 |
| 2080 | 0 | 867 |
| 2040 | 0 | 878 |
| 2300 | 275 | 21 |
Real put accumulation elsewhere ran into the hundreds-to-thousands of contracts. The 2300 strike, sitting right at spot, saw its OI story written mostly on the call side (+275) while the put print that triggered the alert was microscopic. Funding stays unremarkable alongside this — OKX ETH funding annualizes to 5.6%, MEXC near-flat at 0.11%, consensus 2.86% at the 42nd percentile. The divergence between a loud OI signal and a silent tape points to dealer-side repositioning rather than conviction flow.