Skip to main content
This section explains, conceptually, how OCX arrives at the reference prices you see on the platform: where the reference market data comes from, and how OCX marks options and dated futures. It is written for traders, developers, and market makers who want to understand what we compute and why — not a specification of internal parameters.
This is an educational overview. Model constants, staleness limits, and thresholds are operational parameters that OCX may adjust over time. Where a number matters to your trading, it is surfaced through the public API rather than fixed in this document.

​
The building blocks

OCX marks every listed product against institutional-grade reference data from the underlying exchange-traded futures and options markets, consumed in real time:

Market data

Real-time reference futures and options data — the prices everything else is built on.

Options

Reference marks from the underlying option market, with implied volatility and delta computed by OCX using Black-76.

Futures

Dated contracts marked to the live price of the matching reference contract.

​
Core principle: no price is better than a wrong price

OCX prefers the freshest reliable signal and does not invent a value when an input goes stale — it stops updating from that input instead. Every mark carries its age so you can judge it yourself: markUpdatedAt on futures markets, and isStale / ageMs on option board rows. Marks are reference values used for display and risk. The tradable prices are always the OCX order books.

​
Public API surface

For live values, prefer the streaming (SSE) endpoints — they push updates as books and marks change, so you don’t need to poll.