This is an educational overview of our methodology. Exact model constants,
smoothing factors, spread widths, deviation limits, and rate caps are
operational parameters that OCX may adjust over time in response to market
conditions. Where a specific number matters to your trading, it is surfaced
through the public API responses rather than fixed in this document.
The building blocks
OCX prices every listed product against institutional reference data from the CME Group markets, delivered in real time through CQG. From that single source of truth, three pricing pipelines run:Market data
Real-time CME futures and options via CQG — the reference prices everything
else is built on.
Perpetuals
Index price, mark price, and the periodic, capped funding mechanism that
tethers a perp to its underlying.
Options
Black-76 pricing off an implied-volatility surface fitted to market quotes.
Futures
Dated contracts marked to fair value from spot/index plus cost of carry.
Core principle: no price is better than a wrong price
Across every pipeline, OCX prefers the freshest reliable signal and treats inputs that are too old to trust as unavailable rather than carrying them forward. A missing input produces no mark rather than a stale one. This discipline keeps downstream funding, margin, and settlement deterministic and reproducible.Public API surface
The prices and inputs described in this section are exposed through OCX’s public API so you can consume them programmatically. Endpoints include (among others):| Purpose | Endpoint |
|---|---|
| Perpetual & futures markets and their marks | GET /perps/markets |
| Per-market mark, index, funding rate, open interest, 24h stats | GET /perps/market-stats |
| Perpetual order book | GET /perps/orderbook/{marketId} |
| Perpetual OHLC candles | GET /perps/ohlc |
| Recent perpetual trades | GET /perps/trades |
| Live perpetual book / event stream (SSE) | GET /perps/book-stream, GET /perps/stream/events |
| Options board (all strikes/expiries with marks & IV) | GET /markets/board |
| Live options board stream (SSE) | GET /markets/board/stream |
| Options order book | GET /options/orderbook/{market_id} |
| Volatility index | GET /markets/dvol |