How to read the tracking gap

How to read the tracking gap

On every ticker page there is a column called *gap*. It is one line of arithmetic:

gap = token price ÷ last close of the underlying − 1

It answers a narrow question: if you bought this token right now and the share is worth what it closed at, how much more or less are you paying for the same exposure?

Four things can move that number

1. A fee inside the quote. A venue that builds a spread into its price shows up here. This is the component the fee stack is about.

2. Market hours. The token trades 24/7. The share prints during an exchange session. On a Saturday, the gap measures the weekend, not a cost.

3. Reinvested dividends. Ondo's tokens are total-return trackers; dividends are reinvested net of withholding, so the token's price is designed to rise relative to the raw share over time.

4. Corporate actions. A 10:1 split halves nothing on-chain if the token contract is not adjusted, or if the data source reports a pre-split token price against a post-split share price. The ratio jumps by a factor of ten, and the "gap" becomes meaningless.

The 40% rule on this site

Gaps beyond ±40% are excluded from the ranked table on /spreads and shown separately with their ratio. The rule is mechanical and deliberately blunt: no legitimate spread or dividend drift produces a 400% or 900% gap, and a share split produces exactly those numbers. Calling that a premium would be the single most misleading thing this site could publish.

What to do with the number

• Within ±1% on a liquid ticker with the exchange open: that is close to the real cost of buying today, fee and spread included.
• Between 1% and 5%: normal for thin tokens, weekends, or a venue whose mark-up is wide.
• Negative: the token is cheaper than the last close. Sometimes that is an opportunity, more often it means the token market has not caught up with news, or the share moved after the close.
• Beyond ±40%: check the split history before drawing any conclusion.

Why publish it at all

Because it is the only cost component a buyer can verify from outside. Venues publish the headline fee; nobody publishes the spread as a number. Comparing a token's price with the share it is meant to track is the closest an outsider can get to the invoice.