During August, we studied NSE single-stock futures by looking at the average number of futures contracts traded per day. All available futures expiries for each underlying were combined before calculating the average.

The result is the Vtrender Futures Liquidity 100 — a ranked view of where derivatives participation is actually concentrated.

For Vtrender Charts members, there is a practical purpose behind this study.

It can help us decide which stocks deserve to be on the watchlist before an Orderflow condition appears.

That Orderflow condition we are looking for is the IB30 and the IS30

What exactly is the IB30 and IS30?

Why contracts traded matter

A stock can appear active for several different reasons.

It can have high cash turnover. It can represent a very large underlying share quantity. It can have high open interest. Or its price and lot size can make its rupee turnover look unusually large.

At Vtrender, we deliberately used a simpler measure:

How many futures contracts are actually trading every day?

In August, for example:

• HDFCBANK averaged approximately 72,296 futures contracts per day

• RELIANCE approximately 38,020

• INFY approximately 35,343

• SBIN approximately 23,180

• TCS approximately 22,864

• BSE approximately 22,387

• ICICIBANK approximately 20,278

• AXISBANK approximately 17,850

• BHARTIARTL approximately 17,613

• JIOFIN approximately 16,651

The Top 100 together averaged approximately 10.23 lakh futures contracts per day.

But for everyday charting, we don't necessarily need 100 stocks on screen.

The Top 50 is a much more practical starting universe.

Full report at - https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:AP:d340fadd-fa34-4d75-af6b-449481c8c2dc

From a liquidity study to a trading watchlist

This is where the report becomes useful inside Vtrender Charts.

Suppose an IB30 or IS30 condition appears.

The alert itself tells us that something interesting is happening in the Orderflow.

But an alert occurring in a thinly traded futures contract and the same condition appearing in one of the market's most actively traded contracts are not necessarily equivalent observations.

This gives us a useful two-stage process:

Stage 1 — Start with participation

Use the Futures Liquidity 100 to establish the universe.

For a tighter working list, begin with approximately the Top 50 futures contracts.

These are stocks where the market has already demonstrated sustained derivatives participation.

Stage 2 — Let the chart identify the opportunity

Now monitor that universe for the conditions you normally use inside Vtrender Charts:

IB30, IS30 and other relevant Orderflow alerts or structures.

Instead of scanning an enormous F&O universe and treating every alert equally, we are asking the chart to find something interesting inside a universe where meaningful participation already exists.

Download the study from here : https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:AP:d340fadd-fa34-4d75-af6b-449481c8c2dc

Liquidity first. Signal second.

An IB30 or IS30 condition should never be interpreted simply because the alert has appeared.

The Liquidity 100 doesn't change that.

What it gives us is context.

Consider two stocks displaying a similar Orderflow condition.

One trades 15,000–20,000 futures contracts on an average day.

The other trades 2,000.

Everything else being equal, the first deserves our attention sooner because there is substantially greater market participation behind the instrument.

Liquidity → Alert → Structure → Context → Decision

The PDF helps with the first step.

Vtrender Charts helps with the rest.

A full tools walkthrough is at the top right of charts --->> charts,vtrender.com

Why we compared July and August

There is another useful dimension to the study.

We didn't simply rank August.

We rebuilt the same ranking for July and compared every instrument across the two months.

77 stocks remained in the Top 100 in both July and August.

That gives us a relatively stable core derivatives universe.

But activity inside that universe changed materially.

The 77 common stocks averaged:

July: 10.79 lakh futures contracts/day

versus

August: 8.72 lakh contracts/day

A decline of approximately:

19.2%

And the breadth of that decline was significant.

Of those 77 stocks:

58 traded fewer contracts per day in August.

Only:

19 traded more.

That tells us something important for chart users.

Liquidity rankings are not permanent.

A stock that deserves a prominent place on the watchlist today may not deserve the same place several months later.

We therefore intend to treat liquidity as a variable that can be measured rather than assumed.

Reading a cas screen - https://vtrender.com/posts/reading-the-nse-cas-screen-left-to-right

Some stocks moved sharply

August produced meaningful changes inside the liquidity table.

BSE, for example, moved from approximately 12,637 contracts/day in July to 22,387 in August, an increase of about 77%.

PFC increased approximately 49%.

HAL increased approximately 42%.

IDEA increased approximately 31%.

At the other end, several major contracts experienced substantial reductions in participation.

HCLTECH fell approximately 58%.

TCS fell approximately 50%.

INFY approximately 50%.

WIPRO approximately 48%.

TECHM approximately 47%.

M&M approximately 47%.

This is why a static F&O watchlist isn't enough.

The market continuously changes where it chooses to concentrate participation.

Our watchlists should be capable of changing with it.

How we suggest using the report

For Elite Plus, Elite and Professional members, the attached Market Structure Report can be used as a companion to your existing chart workflow.

get Your copy here -

Start with the Top 50 stocks in the August Futures Liquidity 100.

Add the names relevant to your workflow to a dedicated watchlist.

Then use your normal Vtrender process to monitor those instruments for IB30, IS30 and other Orderflow conditions.

The ranking does not tell us whether a stock is bullish or bearish.

It does not tell us whether an IB30 or IS30 will succeed.

And high liquidity by itself is never a reason to take a trade.

What it tells us is much simpler:

These are the contracts where the market has recently demonstrated the greatest amount of futures participation.

For an Orderflow trader, that's useful information before the setup even arrives.

The larger objective

Over time, we want to get better at answering three separate questions:

Where is liquidity?

Where is liquidity moving?

And what is Orderflow doing once we get there?

The August Market Structure Report is our first structured attempt to connect those questions.

Download the attached report, look particularly at the Top 50, and compare that universe against the stocks currently occupying your own Orderflow watchlists.

There should be some useful additions — and possibly a few names that no longer deserve the screen space they are getting.

Vtrender Market Structure Desk
Vtrender Technologies Private Limited

Market-structure research and charting context only. The liquidity ranking and chart alerts are not buy/sell recommendations.