If markets feel choppy to you, it’s not your imagination.

And if that chop seems awkward, or difficult to reconcile given very subdued realized volatility, that’s not your imagination either.

Finally, if you suspect the proliferation of 0DTE options (and everything that goes along with them from an intraday behavioral perspective) might be a contributing factor to what often feels like incessant “churn,” that’s not your imagination.

There’s been a “notable jump” in intraday equities volatility, Nomura’s Charlie McElligott said Friday, in a lively note describing “chop,” “carnage” and “reversal pain.”

As a share of overall S&P options volume, 0DTE options were 55% on Thursday and also on Wednesday. Those are record highs. On successive days.

Indeed, we’ve now had three of the top 10 0DTE volume days on record in August, and three of the top 10 days as a share of overall volume too.

“In my mind, [that’s] a clear contributor to the intraday volatility we’re seeing MTD, on account of the dealer intraday hedging market impact,” McElligott wrote.

The figures above give you a sense of the rather dramatic (I’d call it meteoric) rise of the 0DTE phenomenon.

McElligott went on to demonstrate that although close-to-close vol is low, a measure that takes account of intraday vol is much higher. Again: The “chop” isn’t your imagination.

So, if you’re a trader looking for a culprit to explain what you’re “anecdotally feeling,” as Charlie aptly put it, part of that explanation is the impact of 0DTEs.