Long Gamma vs Short Gamma Regime — A Trader's Field Guide

The mental model

Imagine the S&P 500 as a ball, and dealer hedging as the surface it sits on.

• Long Gamma regime — the ball sits in a bowl. Push it, and gravity (dealer hedging) pulls it back to centre.
• Short Gamma regime — the ball sits on a dome. Push it, and gravity pulls it further in the direction you pushed.

This single image explains 80% of what you need to know about gamma regimes. Everything below is just the operational details.

What changes when you cross Zero Gamma

Almost everything. Here's the field-guide cheat sheet:

Read that table again. Every row inverts between the two regimes. That's the level of behavioural change you're navigating.

How to actually trade Long Gamma

Long Gamma is the regime that pays patient, disciplined fade traders and punishes momentum chasers.

Setup logic:

• Look for price tagging structural levels (Call Wall, Put Wall, prior day high/low, EOD magnet)
• Wait for rejection candle on the 5m with confirming flow (DEX Flow opposing the test)
• Enter on the first close back inside the structure

Stop logic:

• Tight — 1.5 × ATR(5m) is usually enough
• Place beyond the structural level, not at a round number
• Time stop: if no follow-through in 15 minutes, exit

Target logic:

• First target: midpoint of the day's range (or Zero Gamma if visible)
• Second target: opposite structural level
• Always hold a runner — Long Gamma days do trend in the last hour

Sizing: Larger than your baseline. The R:R is compressed (small moves), so volume has to compensate.

How to actually trade Short Gamma

Short Gamma is the regime that pays disciplined breakout / momentum traders and punishes fade-and-pray contrarians.

Setup logic:

• Look for break of intraday structure (overnight high/low, prior session value area)
• Confirm with expanding range bars and accelerating Net GEX in the same direction
• Enter on first pullback into broken level, not on the break itself

Stop logic:

• Wide — 2.5 × ATR(5m) minimum
• Wicks are normal — don't let a 3-tick spike take you out
• Use structural stops (back inside broken level), not currency stops

Target logic:

• Run with the trend until counter-flow shows up (Net GEX slope reverses, DEX Flow turns)
• Don't take partial profits too early — Short Gamma trends often run 2-3x the size you'd expect in Long Gamma
• Trail behind structure, not behind price

Sizing: Smaller than your baseline. Slippage is real; one bad fill in Short Gamma costs 2-3 Long Gamma winners.

The trap: trading the wrong regime's playbook

Every blown account we've seen at Hermēs has the same pattern:

• Day 1-4 (Long Gamma streak): trader sets stops tight, fades extremes, makes consistent money, builds confidence in the playbook
• Day 5 (regime shift to Short Gamma): same setup → same trade → stop gets ripped out on the first wick → ego revenge trade → second stop → third stop → margin call

The setup didn't fail. The regime changed and the trader didn't.

This is the single biggest reason Hermēs surfaces the regime as a screen-dominating HUD card, not buried in a menu. You should never be confused about which regime you're in.

Regime transitions are the highest-stakes moments

Most retail flow content treats the regime as binary — "we're long gamma today, we're short gamma today." Reality is fuzzier. The transition matters more than the steady state.

Watch for these transition signatures:

1. Spot approaches 0Γ within 0.3% with falling Net GEX slope
2. Realised vol of last 30m > median of session
3. Cross-asset confirmation — VIX, ZN bid, DX move all confirm

When all three line up, the regime is about to flip. The first 15-30 minutes after the flip are usually the highest-information segment of the trading day.

In Hermēs, this is exactly what the Gamma Flip Alert is built to fire on — and why Ultra users get a Discord ping the moment all three conditions converge.

Time-of-day patterns differ by regime

A subtle but high-edge observation:

• Long Gamma peaks in the lunch hour (12:00 – 14:00 ET). Dealers hedge into the close, range expands slightly into 15:30, then contracts to the bell.
• Short Gamma accelerates into the close. The last 90 minutes is when the avalanche tends to gather. EOD Magnet is most reliable in Short Gamma.

If you size based on time-of-day, this asymmetry alone should be enough to change your trade selection by 14:00 ET.

Concrete rules summary

If you do nothing else, follow these:

1. Know which regime you're in before you trade. Always.
2. Inversion rules: Long Gamma = fade extremes + tight stops + larger size. Short Gamma = follow momentum + wide stops + smaller size.
3. The same setup is two different trades in two different regimes — if you can't articulate which one, don't take it.
4. Regime transitions are tradeable. The 15-30 min around a 0Γ break tends to print the day's biggest move.
5. Never argue with the regime. "It should mean-revert" in Short Gamma is the most expensive sentence in trading.

See it on a real chart

Hermēs displays the current regime as a glowing card on the Tactical HUD and overlays Zero Gamma + Call/Put Walls on the main chart. Every regime flip is detected in real time, pushed to Discord, and timestamped in the HuntingFlow history replay for after-the-fact review.

If you want to actually see which regime you're in on today's ES / NQ — that's the core promise of Hermēs Pro at $78/mo. Ultra at $128 adds the full 26-ticker universe with Gamma Flip alerts + Webhook delivery.

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Related:

• What Is Zero Gamma — the level that defines the regime
• How to Read Net GEX — the direction-bias indicator that pairs with the regime
• GEX 4-Layer Framework — the full methodology
• Futures Trader Playbook — 5 real scenarios end-to-end