 Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the general disclosure. All Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. This disclosure, training futures, equities, and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. And JEC says Discord audio good, thank you, thanks for the confirmation. The focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug chat channel and Discord is options, order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading. At first is planning, and I use positional analysis. And I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day, as well as a directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. And I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow on Spot Gama Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And let me just say that I'm just talking about the underlying here. Any setups that I talk about, I'm just talking about the underlying. And those trades can be taken any number of ways with shares or futures depending on which instrument I'm talking about or options. For example, the S&P 500, any setup that I talk about can be taken with ES futures, MES futures, spy shares, spy options, or SPX options. I'm just talking about the setup and the underlying. And again, you can trade that any way that suits you. All right, and again, this is my process. Positional analysis as opposed to fundamental analysis or technical analysis. And this is how I look at markets. And again, looking at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow on Spot Gama Hero for my setups. And on topic questions or comments are welcome. And I will be watching the Discord options-dug chat channel as well as the chat in YouTube. So again, please feel free to post your questions and comments. All right, let's get started. So what I want to talk about today, my agenda for today, is first of all, go over economic data and events for the week. And then I'll talk about my positional analysis. And then I'll talk about setups. So first of all, today's news, there was consumer confidence data that came out at 10 AM. And it was better than expected. And the market did seem to have some reaction to that up and down. And then on Thursday, the GDP report comes out at 8.30 AM Eastern time. And then finally, on Friday, the PCE inflation data that the Fed uses is out at 8.30 AM Eastern time. And then consumer sentiment out at 10 AM. And then finally, that's the end of the quarter. And that is also the day that JPMorgan will roll their collar for their fund that uses this collar. And recall the 4065 SPX, 4065 strike is the short call in the current JPMorgan collar. All right, let's start with positional analysis now. This is the S&P 500 futures, ES, and Bookmap. And before I dig into this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame. I'm going to start with a 20-day one-hour chart. This is in thinkorswim, just showing price and spot gamma levels. These levels are provided to spot gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms here. This is thinkorswim. And just to point out some of the key levels, key spot gamma levels, this is SPX 3800 put wall, the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. And then here is the 3950 level and also this 3960 level that has held as support earlier today, it looks like, that was just broken now. And then here is the 4000 level. That is the absolute gamma strike, the strike with the largest absolute gamma can be expected to act as support, resistance, or price magnet. That's also the volatility trigger. And the volatility trigger is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level, meaning that market makers position on the gamma curve below that level is negative. And that means they have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. So their market makers position on the gamma curve right now is negative. And then above that level, their position on the gamma curve is positive. And that means they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. So obviously, SPX is trading below the volatility trigger right now. And then finally, here's the call wall, the strike with the largest absolute positive gamma. And that is the 4065 level, again the short call strike and the JP Morgan collar that expires on Friday. And the call wall is the strike with the largest, again, the largest absolute positive gamma can be expected to act as resistance. All right, so those are the levels that are in range of this chart. And let's take a look at a shorter time frame now. Another think of swim chart. And this is a one day, one minute chart just to show the levels that are in play for today. So here is the 4,000 level up above and then the 3960 level. Again, indicated in the spot gamma AM Founders note to act as support. And it did earlier today. And it looks like now price has broken through and may be heading down to 3950, which is the next support level. All right, let's take a look at book map now. And this is the so far the S&P 500 has traded in a range today with good short setups and long setups. I'm going to change these down, tone these down just a little bit. All right, so the same levels are shown on this chart. And I have two columns of notes. These are the spot gamma cloud notes, again, provided to spot gamma subscribers here in this case for book map. And then I also have my own column of notes. These are cloud levels. And I've marked the 3950 support level here, as well as the 3960, which did act as support earlier today. Then I'm also showing big round numbers in ES. That's just for my own quick visual reference. That's the ES 4000 level. And then I also marked the key spy levels, spy gamma levels, like the key gamma strike or call wall, put wall for spy. And those levels have not been in play today so far. So they're not seen on this chart. And I'll talk more about this setup, or setups, in the S&P 500 in a few minutes. All right, so it looks like, again, the 3960 support level has broken, and the next level in play is the 3950. All right, so those are the levels that are in play for today. And let's talk about shifts and levels. And this will be a very, very short conversational very, very short conversation. The only shift in levels was the SPX volatility trigger moved up from 3960 yesterday to 4000 today. So again, that is spot gammas proprietary gamma flip level. And the SPX is trading below that level, so that indicating, again, SPX market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. All right, let's see where those levels come from. So we'll take a look at the S&P 500 absolute gamma levels. This is for SPX showing positive gamma or call gamma above the zero level that's shown by the black bars and below the zero level that is negative gamma or put gamma shown with the teal bars. And the 4000 level remains the absolute gamma strike. And you can see that is obviously the strike with the largest absolute gamma. And 3800, the put wall, the strike with the largest net negative gamma can be expected to act as support. And then there's the 4065 level. Again, the call wall, the strike with the largest absolute positive gamma can be expected to act as resistance. So that is showing where these, the levels that I talked about earlier, that's where the levels come from. And for SPY, 400 is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. And the put wall is at 390. And that's pretty obvious, the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And 410 is the call wall. Let's take a look at one other chart while we're on this page. And these are the combo levels. And this is combining gamma for SPX and SPY into one level converted to an equivalent SPX number and showing the same thing, positive gamma above the zero line and negative gamma or a put gamma below. And this will show the, here's the 4000 strike. And there's a bit of a void here below 4000. But that is really the last strike with any negative gamma or a put gamma. And recall that is also the volatility trigger. So negative gamma or a put gamma below that level and positive gamma or a call gamma above that level. All right, let's take a look at the NASDAQ. And for the NASDAQ, we look at QQQ. NDX is not significant. So for QQQ, all the levels remain the same from yesterday. 300 is the key gamma strike. And 285 is the put wall. And then 320 is the call wall. All right, so that's the gamma levels. And let's take a look now at data in the Spot Gamma AM Founders Note. And I normally focus on this gamma notional here. This is Market Maker's position on the gamma curve. And SPX is shown in the left column. Spy in the middle column. And QQQ on the far right column. And note, all these numbers are negative, indicating, again, Market Maker's position on the gamma curve for all these indices is negative. And that means that traders are long puts. Market Maker's are short puts. And they have to sell futures as price drops to hedge their delta exposure. And as price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short futures. So for SPX and SPI, they are trading ES futures. And for QQQ, most likely trading NQ futures. All right, these levels did change from yesterday and the picture is mixed. So for the S&B 500, both the levels for SPX and SPI became less negative. So yesterday, SPX gamma notional was minus 231. Today, it's minus 171, so a little bit less negative. And then for SPI, yesterday, gamma notional was minus 1486. Today, it's minus 1254. And then on the other hand, gamma notional for QQQ became more negative. Yesterday, it was minus 27, today it is minus 219. All right, there's still some wonkiness with the Vana charts. They don't look normal, so I'm going to skip over that. And I'm going to go take a look at my, this is my preparation, primary preparation for the S&B 500. And for stocks, I look at this. This is my key gamma strike spreadsheet. And this is a starting point. And I track the key gamma strike for all the stocks in my watch list every day. And the E column is showing the key gamma strike for the previous day. And the D column is showing the current key gamma strike. That's for today. And I note the change. And I color-coded green if that number increased. And that would be a bullish sign. I can interpret that as bullish or go into spot gamma equity hub and do some further research. And also, red indicates that that number decreased from the previous day. So here, this is for VIX, noting that the current key gamma strike decreased. And I typically note that as bearish for an instrument. So here for the broad market, though, with the key gamma strike dropping for VIX, that's somewhat bullish. All right, so the thing to note here is there's, other than VIX, no change. Not a lot of conviction. And that's the way I approach the day. And I prefer to trade stocks where I have more conviction. Some firm plan in place, like I talked about yesterday with, I think yesterday I talked about meta, NVIDIA, and QQQ. And especially NVIDIA and QQQ with a falling key gamma strike. And here, that is shown yesterday. So that was my plan yesterday, and that worked out well. And then today, not a lot of conviction and stocks. And for me, it was best to focus on the S&P 500. Without any conviction and stocks, I had the strongest, I found the best setups in the S&P 500 today. So I'll talk about that. So let's go take a look at setups now. And I may, I'll probably have some time at the end. So if anybody has any stocks that they want me to take a look at, go ahead and post them now. All right, so let's get to the S&P 500 now. And looking at the ES futures. Actually, let's take a look at HERO first. All right, so this is the S&P 500. For those of you who may not be familiar with this chart, this is the Spot Gamma HERO chart. HERO stands for Hedging Impact to Real Time Options. And this chart is showing a combined signal for the S&P 500, SPX and SPY, and XSP. I don't think XSP is significant or it's pretty insignificant compared to SPX and SPY. So this is showing options trades for SPX and SPY, and then market maker hedging activity. And price is shown with a white line. HERO is shown with a purple line. And a falling HERO indicates traders are taking negative delta positions. And a rising line indicates traders are taking positive delta positions. So this HERO in the morning here led to several good setups. And often the way options traders will trade the S&P 500 is they will fade, moves down in other words, its price is moving down. They will take positive delta positions as HERO is showing at the open. So just in general terms, they are buying calls and or selling puts. Most likely buying calls and buying puts, but the call buyers are winning in the morning. And price moves higher as HERO moves higher. So that was the first setup right after the open with a rising HERO. And then here was the first divergent setup. So HERO makes, let me just zoom in on this a little bit more. So here price makes a slightly higher high while HERO makes a higher low, a lower high, and starts to move down. And that sets up a short somewhere between 1015 and 1020. So let's go take a look at the first setups, the first long and short. And note there's another long after that. And this one was easier to read because it was at that 39.60 support level. That's where the reversal higher took place. So confirmation long, divergent short, and then really a confirmation long. Yeah, let's RJ, I will take a look at that in just a minute. That may change the zoom of this chart. So I want to keep it here while we look at book map and then I'll come back and change. So I'm going to zoom in on the first couple of hours here on the S&P 500 and take a look at the order flow. So kind of a range higher, mostly green dots, indicating market buy orders, rising CVD, and some iceberg orders here just after the open. These are orders that larger traders use to hide their size. And that's bullish. That's shown by this blue number here. And that was 945 contracts and seven transactions. So bullish. And then you can see there were a couple of reversals here of one at VWAP with a shift in order flow from bullish to negative, shown with the green dots and a shift to the purple dots. And then the one more move higher and then the final shift from bullish order flow to bearish order flow. And you can see the falling CVD and a retest of the VWAP, then a sharp move lower. And then finally, note the iceberg orders coming in as the S&P 500 tests the 3960 support level. So this was the, for me, this was the easiest read here. That 3960 support level held as support, iceberg orders buying, hero rising, and that made for a good long. Let me zoom in on this way too much. Sorry about this. All right, so there's the long set up. So we saw the jump in iceberg orders. And now after one retest of the 3960 level, order flow finally shifts positive, rising CVD, cumulative volume delta, and making for a good long set up. And we'll take a look at SPI and see where that, where price finally went and reverse lower. So let's go take a look at SPI for that same set up. And there is the reversal higher at the same time at the 3960 support level. A move up to the 396 level. And now price is heading lower. And this could be after the European close. All right, so let's go back and take a look at hero now. So now here is the reversal lower around 1150, 1112 o'clock. Hero starts to move lower. Price makes an equal high, double top, then starts to move lower. All right, let's take a breakdown look at the calls and puts. And this is pretty typical of the S&P 500. His traders are buying calls that shown by the rising orange line. And they are also buying puts. And interesting that the number for calls is actually greater. Let's make sure we're all at the 1.96 billion for calls. Now it's greater for puts versus minus 2.17 billion. So the put buyers are winning. But traders, there you go, RJ. Traders are buying calls and buying puts. But the put buyers are winning. Right now it looks like they kind of accelerated lower right around 1245. Does that line get steeper? OK, and YouTube, Truman asked the icebergs, icons were the completed transactions, not hidden orders that are waiting to be transacted. And yes, that is correct. Bookmap can detect the iceberg orders after they have transacted. There's no way of knowing that those hidden orders are there prior to the actual execution or transaction. Actually, there is a sometimes iceberg orders. Bookmap can detect iceberg orders. But typically, they have to transact before bookmap can recognize them. All right, so that's the S&P 500. And let's go take a look at some stocks now. So again, if anybody has any stocks that they want me to take a look at, let me know. Otherwise, I'll start here with Amazon. I'm going to zoom in on the morning. And what I saw was this divergent short, this large drop in hero, then price response. All right, Chilo asked, says, enjoying the stream. Thank you. Could you look at Unity? It's a small cap. I doubt I have any information on Unity. I'll take a look in a minute. There are a limited number of symbols available that are set up for hero, or that hero is available, so I'll look for you, but I doubt it's available. Any stock that does not have a very strong options market is probably not there. So anyway, let's go take a look at Amazon. Let's go to Bookmap. Take a look at Amazon. And there's that divergent short and a reversal lower at the 96 hedge wall, or 98 hedge wall. I'm sorry, 98 reversal lower. Also at VWAP and kind of a slow grind lower until about the time that my session started. All right, RJ wants to look at VXX. So let's go see if those symbols mentioned are in hero. And I don't have either of those up in Bookmap. So this is the entire list of stocks that are available with hero. So here you, Gilo, you is not in here. Here's VXX. So not a lot to see here. Very little in the way of options activity. And it looks like now VXX. The short term futures ETN is rising. All right, RJ, there's VXX. Let's go back to my watch list now. This is an alphabetical order. And the next was meta. And abacus says I did one this morning. Close-minded 11 was in for 12 minutes. And I'm not sure what symbol you're talking about. All right, here's meta. I think I saw that JEC had a trade in meta earlier today, a one contract on SPX. And meta actually had a rising call wall. So that alone would be a bullish signal. But a pretty choppy session in meta today. So let's go take a look at Bookmap again. Here's meta. Short set up reversal at the 200 key gamma strike. Then along at around 199, back up to the 200 key gamma strike. So pretty choppy session today. Let's go back and take a look at hero. Let's zoom in on hero. Remember yesterday I talked about a divergent set up in meta and really didn't see anything as clean today. More just confirmation. Short at the open. Maybe really confirmation long, confirmation short, confirmation long. I prefer to trade the divergences. It gives me time to plan the divergences like I showed in the S&P 500. That's what I prefer to trade. All right, so that's meta. And the next, Microsoft. I'm going to zoom in on this. And for Microsoft, the call wall did decrease. So just on the surface, that one thing is somewhat bearish. And a lot of stocks had a sharp drop at the open. If you like to trade the open, Tesla was the best, right down. And confirmation long and short. Let's go take a look at Bookmap. And here it looks like I've marked the best set up being the short and the morning. Let's go back and take a look at Hero. We'll zoom in. So the first short and then Hero makes a lower high and price makes a lower high, then moves lower. And you can see the reversal at VWAP a couple of times. Oh, good for a couple points down to the 272 hedge wall and all the liquidity at that level that comes in at the open, came in at the open. So that was Microsoft and the next stock, NVIDIA. And NVIDIA had more range today than many of the other stocks that I've looked at. Big sharp drop right at the open. Notice all the pink dots there. Definitely bearish, shorter flow. And let's take a look at CVD. Really still bearish, cumulative volume delta. Let's go take a look at Hero. And by the way, Netflix was pretty strong in the morning. It's on my watch list, but I find it pretty difficult to trade. It's the bid-ask spread is so wide. But there's a strong correlation, strong confirmation with options, trades, hedging, flow, and price action in Netflix. NVIDIA, also strong confirmation, strong correlation between hedging, flow, and price action. And here's the sharp move lower. Then price moves higher, makes a higher low, making for a good long setup. And then Hero levels off as well as price. So again, Hero levels off, price levels off. Let's go take a look at book map. And RJ says this $2.75 call wall for NVIDIA last week has been the high on NVIDIA. And that's not surprising. NVIDIA for the last few weeks was very strong. So it looks like it's consolidating today. Sharp move lower confirmed by options, trades, hedging, flow. Then a slight shift in order flow as price makes a lower high. Options traders are starting to buy. And it move up to the 262 hedge wall. And it looks like then price is chopping around that level ever since then. And notice in the SVP column, the concentration of volume at that level. That's the most traded volume. And it looks like the point of control, this purple line, has shifted down to that level as well. And typically for many stocks, it takes a lot to move the point of control because the opening print is so large compared to the rest of the volume today. And then the closing print for many stocks, especially like Apple and Microsoft, is huge compared to the rest of the volume during the day. All right, so that's NVIDIA. Let's take a look at QQQ. And so there is the 305 C1 level in play. So far acted as support. And the C1 is a combo level. That is a spot gamma combo level combining QQQ and NDX. And one means that it is the most significant of the ranking from 1 to 5, 1 being the most significant. All right, let's go take a look at hero for QQQ. All right, so this was confirmation short that I took this as a divergence long. That's how I interpreted this. So hero, let me redraw that, hero makes a sharp move higher and then price responds higher. So that's right around 1030, 1035. Let's go take a look at that. Then hero makes a sharp drop and price starts to move lower around 12. So we'll look at 1035 and 12 noon. So here's the reversal higher just above the 305 level at 1035. And you can see the shift in order flow after the sharp drop lower, aggressive buyers come in. And then for a minute or for a few minutes, aggressive sellers and then aggressive buyers come in and move the price up just past VWAP. And let's take a look and see what options traders are doing now. So it looks like price. So price reversed higher again at the 305 C1 level. We'll just zoom in. And at the same time, options traders are taking positive delta positions. So now the call buyers are in control. And actually traders looks like they have at least stopped buying puts, maybe even selling a few puts with a slightly rising blue line there. So at least for the moment, the call buyers are in control. Let's take a look at Tesla. And as usual, there's a very strong correlation between options trades and hedging flow and mostly bearish today in Tesla. And for Tesla, the only shift in level, shifts in levels that I had was the drop in the call wall. There was a question in Discord earlier today. I think it around the open about AMD and Tesla. And for AMD, I had no conviction. AMD, the hedge wall increased. The call wall decreased. And the put wall increased. And then for Tesla, the call wall decreased. So just based on that, I would say slightly bearish. But in this case, you just have to be watching order flow and hedging flow. So let's go take a look at book map. For Tesla, and we'll see an extremely sharp drop at the open. So here's the sharp drop. And to catch that, you really had to be prepared. And then the next opportunity for a decent trade was the absorption and reversal at the 190 level. And then here, at VWAP, down to so far 186. Let's go see what options traders are doing now. So they have, at least for the moment, started buying calls and selling puts. Heroes rising, prices rising. All right, let's go back. I want to take a look at the S&P 500 again. Go back to the combined signal. And it looks like the call buyers are winning here. And price reversal higher. Looks like a ride around SPX 39.52. Let's check that with the thinkorswim chart. Oops, wrong chart. Yeah, the low here was 39.51.62. And prices back up to the 39.60 level. Let's go take a look at book map. We'll take a look at SPY. So reversal just above the 39.50 level. Again, 39.52. Call buyers are winning now. We'll take a look at the S&P 500 futures, ES. So shift in order flow. A lot of green dots coming in, rising CVD. But it looks like there's so far not a lot of conviction with larger traders. Not much. There was some iceberg activity going as price was heading down. And they're still in there, it looks like. But now aggressive sellers are coming back in. All right, does anybody have? So RJ asked, is there any uptick of call buying or put selling at the bottom? And let's see. We'll go back to hero, break out the signal. And let's change the look back period. So I'm just looking back now at the last 30 minutes of data. And here, and this makes perfect sense, traders are selling puts at the lows, which is what I like to do. If you're going to sell a put, that's when you want to sell a put. So call buyers, not much here, slight increase in call buyers. But traders are selling puts at the low there. And that is helping to drive price higher. And Lou in YouTube is back. Apparently, you fixed the YouTube volume problem. Well, I did not make a change. So I guess it is a miracle. I'm glad you're back. Glad your volume is fixed. I didn't do anything. But again, I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad the volume is working for you. All right, so that is the S&B 500. Traders are selling puts. And we'll keep an eye out on that. Meanwhile, my time is nearly up. And Abacus says, the butterfly is a nice trade for a range round market. Yes, it is. JEC asked about that earlier. And that trade is very expensive now. I looked back at what Tom at Tasty Live was doing last week. And he was paying around $4, between $4 and $5 for this zero DTE SPX butterfly with 30 point wide wings. And yesterday, the one that I looked at was $10. And I thought that was just, that's too expensive. And I think Tom said the same thing. So you're paying a lot. Yeah, 50 wide wings. How much did you pay for that? He made $400. That's great. That's an arranged round market. That's bound to make money. Interesting to know how much that cost. One contract. OK. And Chilo asked, the selling puts mean that sellers are expecting a choppy grind up versus buying calls. Potentially, I think they're selling volatility. That is, there are some traders that like to buy options and some traders that like to sell options. I generally prefer to sell options, sell volatility. And let's just take a look at VIX. Where's my VIX chart? So VIX is up just slightly for today. This is today. So and actually, it has been rising. It looks like maybe they looked at this dip down to just a few minutes ago, down to around 20.9, and started selling puts at that level. OK, that is all I have. My time is up. I want to thank you for watching, for your questions and comments. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye.