 Hello everyone. Welcome to Options with Doug. Streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the disclosures. General disclosure, all Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Risk disclosure, trading 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. The focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug chat channel in 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 and the first is planning and I use positional analysis. 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 of my process is execution. And I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in SpotGammaHero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And I will be talking about setups today and those setups can be taken any number of ways. I will be talking about setups in an underlying asset, but you can trade shares, futures, or options. And questions and comments are welcome and I will be watching the Options-Doug chat channel in Discord and the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. So please feel free to post your questions and comments. In my agenda for today there is no news, so I will skip over that as far as I know. No news items, no economic data. And so I'll start with my positional analysis. Then I'll review a few setups from this morning and then we'll cover the live market. Alright, let's get started. So I'm going to start with my positional analysis. So let's take a look at charts. Let's go back to the S&P 500. So this is the S&P 500 futures in Bookmap, ES Futures. And before I take a closer look at this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame. This is SPX in a 30-day one-hour chart in Thinkorswim. And I'm showing some key levels here. Let me point them out. First of all, the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the week shown with the dash purple lines. And right now SPX is in between those two levels. Then the dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the day. And SPX is trading just above that level now. The lower edge of the expected move shown with that dash blue line. And there are also a number of spot gamma levels on this chart. Let me point those out. First of all, here's the put wall at 4,000. That's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. And the volatility trigger at 4,195. That is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level. Below that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. And a negative gamma environment they have to sell or trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance volatility. And then on the other hand, like the current environment, when market makers position on the gamma curve is above this level, it's positive. In a positive gamma environment, they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue volatility. And the next level, the key level to look at for today was the 43 hundred call wall and absolute gamma strike. The absolute gamma strike is the strike with the largest absolute gamma. And the call wall is the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And it certainly did its job today. That was a, within a less than a point, SPX traded to that level and reverse lower. So this is the primary spot gamma levels that earn play. And again, the call wall was the key level today. And it did its job. All right, let's take a look at another thinker swim chart. This is SPX in a one day, one minute chart, focusing on the levels that have been in play for today. And again, the call wall was the level that was level of the day, acting as resistance, as expected, just about 15, 20 minutes into the open, RTH open, acted as resistance. And these levels aren't quite right. The think script was not, did not appear to be updated this morning. So I changed the zero gamma level. And that was it. And I don't think this, this combo L one level, I don't think that should be there. Let's just see. So these are the actual levels for today. They were not updated in the think script. So that combo L one level should be one point above 4,300. The call wall 4,300. Yesterday it was at 4,299. All right, let's take a look at bookbamp down. So here are the levels. And let me just, let me just check on one thing. So now it looks like SPOT gamma has updated their levels before they were showing the call wall at 4,600. And now it's moved down to 4,300. And there is a difference between where I'm showing the call wall and where SPOT gamma is showing the call wall. So these are the SPOT gamma cloud notes. There's the combo L one level. So that is actually something different. And then the, I don't know why they're not labeling that as the call wall. That is the 4,300 call wall. Maybe they still have it at 4,600. Anyway, it's actually 4,300. We can confirm that with the absolute gamma levels. And there's about a five point difference between ES and SPX. So I'm showing what I think are the correct levels in my notes here. So I'm showing there's the 4,430 spy call wall and the SPX 4,300 call wall. And again, that is the key level today. It did act as resistance and other levels are in place. So for right now, ES is trading down just above its lower edge, the expected move for the day. And that's a little bit different than the SPX level. I calculate those two levels differently. I using, or ES, I'm using ES, the expected move. And for SPX, I'm using the SPX expected move. And note now that the SMB 500 is trading below the spy put wall slash volatility trader at 4,427. So as far as spy is concerned, now the index is in the starting to get in the negative gamma region. And then I also have other spy levels. Here's the 429 C1 level, 428 large gamma to the did act as resistance and price continues lower. Now down to the lower edge, the expected move and the 426 level just below. And we'll talk about setups in a few minutes. This was a great, great read, great setup. The reversal lower at the call wall. So again, it did its job as expected. All right, let's take a look at, let's talk about shifts and levels first of all for the SMB 500. And there was just one. So SPX, as far as I can tell, there, there's been some wonkiness with the spot gamma data. But as far as I can tell, there were no changes with the SPX, the volatility trigger put wall, call wall and absolute gamma strike all remain at the levels from yesterday. So no changes. And then for spy, apparently the put wall did shift higher yesterday to 425. And then today shifted higher to 427. So the spy put wall is at this level right here. And it is not doing its job as support. All right, so that's the that's the only shifts and levels in the SMB 500. All right, let's talk about the NASDAQ. And again, I'm still going through my preparation planning positional analysis. So here's NASDAQ trading well below its lower daily expected move. Let's take a look at a QQQ chart here. Looks like I'm going to need to adjust it a little bit. So the levels that have been in play for today, first of all the 357 level did act as resistance. And that was not a spot gamma level. And then 355 is the new absolute gamma strike that's right here. So yesterday, the absolute gamma strike for QQQ was 350. So it moved up to 355. And then the volatility trigger remains at 357 to 354. So QQQ is trading below its volatility trigger now so in a negative gamma environment. Steady downtrend all day. And now below the 350 level. All right, so that is the QQQ. All right, so let's go back. And this is a one day one minute chart. Again, just to isolate the price and the key gamma levels. And we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes and see what options traders were doing and other clues that were available in book map for these short setups. All right, let's take a look at the Vana model now. Here we go. I'm going to take a look at. So this for SPX, this does not look right. There's still some seems to be some issues with spot gamma data. So I'm going to take a look at spy. So this looks a little bit more normal for spy here. So what this chart is showing is how market makers delta notional or delta exposure changes with price delta notional shown on the vertical axis price shown on the horizontal axis. There are two curves on this chart. The first is this light gray curve that shows how market makers gamma notional or delta notional changes with just changes in price. What this is showing is if price increases in a positive gamma environment, market makers will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. They want to remain delta neutral. And the other curve on this chart adds implied volatility to the equation. So that is showing how market makers delta notional will change with changes in price and implied volatility. And that's the Vana effect, the change in delta with a change in implied volatility. Hence the name of this, the Vana model. So this is showing that if price increases, market makers will have slightly less delta notional to hedge as predicted by the delta only curve. On the other hand, like what has been happening today as price decreases and implied volatility increases, market makers will have more delta notional to hedge. Let's see where spy is trading now. Give me just a moment. Let me check a watch list. So we saw that spy was trading in between 426 and 427. So there's 426, there's 427. So this curve works both ways. So as price decreases and implied volatility increases, market makers will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And that could certainly be what's happening today. So there's much more of a, I guess, a tailwind for price moving lower, much more of a boost from Vana here to the downside than to the upside. So if price increases, let's find the, so here's the 430 level. Price was below the 430 level, maybe 429. I can't remember. We'll take a look at the book map chart in just a moment. So from here, this is showing that there was really no Vana tailwind for price to move higher. Maybe market makers slightly buying back short futures. But then on the other hand, as price decreases, they have to start selling futures. And that tends to, again, enhance volatility and certainly contribute to the move down. And in YouTube, Second Wins asked, hi, Doug, how do you get insights for swing trades and spot gamma? Or do you use it for intraday trades only? In the past, I've primarily used it for intraday trades, but I'm starting to use it more for swing trades for holding for longer periods. For example, you know, a good example of a trade today would have been to ES by SPX approached the call wall to, you could buy a put, buy a put spread, sell a call spread, especially with spread trades. If you're buying a put, you might want to buy a zero DTE put. But for spread trades, I would hold them for longer than day and just let them play out. So I'm looking and leaning more towards that way. Or just, you know, that's the approach. So if you're approaching it with a spread trade, you want to go further out than a zero DTE. All right, so that's the Vana model. And that gives us a sense of how market makers are likely to trade and react given movements in price and implied volatility. Let's just take a look at VIX and see what VIX is doing today. Not really much of a move higher, which is kind of interesting. Let's zoom in on, oops. So VIX is only up 0.19, just above 14 today. So kind of interesting. All right, so let's take a look at one other piece of data before we get started here. And this is the Gamma Notional. So this is the beginning of the day. Market makers position on the Gamma Curve for SPX, SPY, NDX, and QQQ. And now I'm focusing more on this Gamma Notional number. So this is all positive for SPX, SPY, NDX, and QQQ. And this is, these numbers did increase from yesterday. So quite positive, positive for SPX, Gamma Notional 1.0121. And notice also the Spot Gamma Gamma Index ranges from minus 4 to positive 4. And so it is, it's definitely in the upper end of the range at 2.693. And then for the other indices, I just look at the Gamma Notional. So positive for SPY, and that was an increase from yesterday where it was slightly negative. And then really no change for NDX. And for QQQ became more positive today. So at the beginning of the day, positive for, positive for all SPX by NDX and QQQ. All right, so second wins ask, looking for stock suggestions, we'll take a look at cat, caterpillar. Yeah, we'll take a look at that. Right, so monkey butt ask, is there a converter for SPX to ES? So there are a couple of ways to do that. And really the easiest way is if you have think or swim. Let's just take a look. The easiest way if you have think or swim is to, I thought I had it in my watch list. Oh, here it is. This is a watch list in think or swim. So there it is right there, ES minus SPX. Just very simple. Just put it into watch list. So right now it is somewhere between 5 and a half and 6. This morning when I looked at it, it was closer to 5. So I just used 5. So it's actually a little bit, a little bit higher now. And this is the, and this is calculating the number in real time. So right now it is actually 6. Closer to 6. All right, so that is the, that's the simple way to do that. And I also have NQ, NQ, NQ, NQ, NQ NDX, right here. NQ minus NDX. And that is around 24. And note that think or swim just uses a continuous contract here. So when think or swim rolls over to the September contract, that will be done automatically. So those numbers will change pretty drastically at the rollover. All right, let's take a look at some setups now. And first of all, let's start with the SAP 500. I'm going to take a look and see what options traders were doing. So let's go to spot gamma hero, back to the SAP 500. What this chart is showing is price for SPX, shown with a white line, and hedging activity for SPX. And options trades and the hedging activity for a combined signal, SPX, SPY, and XSP and ES futures into one combined signal for the SAP 500. So again, showing options trades and hedging flow. And it has definitely been bearish today. Note the number of the total signal at 1 minus 1.7 billion. Traders taking negative delta positions. Let's take a look at the individual components. And then we'll take a closer look at this chart. SPX looks like SPX is starting to shift higher now, but for most of the morning. And this is showing the pre-market pre-open trade. SPX options start trading, I think around 2 a.m., something like that. Anyway, here's the 930 cash open. That's SPX, SPY, kind of for most of the day going in the opposite direction. And then for the final is here the ES futures. And that is negative 1.5 billion. So these guys seem to be in the right direction here. And then the total signal, combining all those, we'll zoom in on this chart. And we'll look at setups from the morning. So this was pretty clear that SPX was right up against a resistance level, the 4300 level. Zoom in on this a little bit more. And as price was making, was moving higher than made equal highs, options traders started selling that. You can see the hero line dropping as price increases. They were fading the move higher up to the, up to the call wall. And that was a great clue for a short setup. And again at a very obvious place, the SPX 4300 call wall did its job and acted as resistance as expected. So let's go take a look at book, ma'am. I'm going to zoom in on the, on the morning here so we can focus on the short setup. So there's the call wall again and note the shift in order flow. Aggressive buyer shown with the green volume dots and then aggressive sellers starting to come in. And then from that price makes a series of lower highs. Note the falling cumulative volume delta. Also sell stop orders shown with this yellow line. So cumulative volume delta is the dark blue to pink line. It changes to pink when that number becomes negative. And then sell stop orders shown with the yellow line start to fuel the move lower. So very clear short set up. And again a very obvious level for the S&B 500. So it looks like the lower daily expected move for ES is holding so far. We'll look at that in a few more minutes when we look at the live market. So I'm, I'm doing a setup review now. So let's take a look at NASDAQ. So let me zoom in on the morning session. And again a fairly clear reversal from bullish to bearish. Quick run, aggressive buyers up to the 357 level QQQ, 357, then aggressive sellers start to come in and price makes a series of lower highs. And in this case, larger traders were selling with iceberg orders and both cumulative volume delta and sell stop orders also were moving lower. So traders were, this was sell stop orders helping to fuel the move lower as well as aggressive sellers shown with the falling cumulative volume delta and all of the, the pink volume dots. Let's go take a look and see what options traders were doing. Go to hero. All right, let's take a look at the NASDAQ signal now. Not quite as clear. This is a combined signal for NDX and QQQ similar to the S&B 500. Again combining a signal of NDX and QQQ into one. Let's zoom in on this chart and zoom in on the morning session. So this was just looking at the morning, a nice divergent setup later on the day became less clear. So hero was falling options traders were taking negative delta positions pretty much from the open and then price, it took a while to respond. We saw the, the multiple test of the 357 level until price finally started to move lower and then options traders got on the wrong side of the move and started taking positive delta positions. But at that time the sell stop orders and the iceberg orders and the aggressive sellers were all continue to take price lower. But this was, this is what I call a hero kickoff. The first sign was options traders taking negative delta positions and price reverses and then other players take the field. In this case, let's go back and take a look at book map. So in this case, here are the other players taking the field. Larger traders with iceberg orders and other traders, smaller traders with their sell stop orders as well as aggressive sellers shown with the falling cumulative volume delta, also the pink volume dots. So hero kickoff setup there in the NASDAQ and I'll take a look at a few stocks for finished up the setup review and then we'll take a look at the live market. So the first stock is AMD and now 125 is the call wall and just like the S&P 500 did its job and acted as resistance. Let's take a look at hero and see what options traders were doing. There's AMD. There's the call wall at 125. Zoom in on this chart. So here's a divergent setup. Let me zoom in on this. Hero moves lower. It looks like AMD does a second test of the 125 call wall as traders were taking negative delta positions and then price turns lower. So there's the short setup in AMD and the next, let's go back to book map. So there's that second test of the call wall just below the call wall and note the aggressive sellers at that level and then price moves lower. The next one is Google and really you could, any of these large cap tech stocks, which is what I have here in book map, any one of these would have been a good short setup. So here's Google. Let's go take a look at, see what options traders were doing for Google. So in the case of Google trading below the call wall here at 130, zoom in a bit and in the morning, just a couple of minutes after the open traders start taking negative delta positions and then price follows lower, just a few minutes later. All right, let's take a look at meta and pretty similar. Negative delta positions, just a couple of minutes after the open and price follows. So traders are, in the morning they were selling calls and buying puts. It looks like now put buyers are really in control. Let's go take a look at book map. So here's meta. Let me, all these numbers here, this is the absorption and sweeps indicator and that is a little bit out of control. Let me bump up these numbers. That should eliminate some of that. All right, so meta continues down. All right, so when YouTube Max says I really appreciate your presentations, great way to take inventory and get some objective feedback on my market read, they add some structure and regular rhythm to my trading day. Thank you. Thank you for kind of words. This is a new way of looking at the market that I think makes a lot of sense. The key here, my thesis, key thesis, is that options traders and market maker hedging activity are a key driver of index products as well as many stocks, like these large cap tech stocks. All right, let's go back to hero. So those are the stocks that I wanted to highlight, but you could really go through, again, this is what I trade, large cap tech stocks is what I follow and take a look at any of these. All Amazon, a little bit difficult read here, but plenty of others where there's a clear correlation between hedging flow and price action and kind of a choppy day there in Tesla. All right, so second wins wanted to look at Caterpillar. I don't know why that's not coming up. Let's try it this way. Oh, it looks like Caterpillar is not in the list of stocks that support hero. So sorry about that second wins, it's not here. Let's go back to the S&P 500. All right, so this continues to be bearish. Traders continue to take negative delta positions. Let's go take a look at book map. So it looks like, so we know that options traders are still taking negative delta positions. The lower edge of the expected move for the day did hold as support and it looks like larger traders are coming in now and buying with iceberg orders. They use iceberg orders to hide their size. That's a good indication of larger traders coming in. So this is showing the 600 executed. Here this is showing that 1265 executed and six transactions, 824 executed. They're continuing to buy. Let's go back and take a look at hero. We'll zoom in a bit here. Also take a look at a shorter rolling window period to get more clarity on what's going on right now. So this is showing a 30 minute rolling window period, like a 30 period rolling average. What I was looking at prior was the one day cumulative signal for the entire day and we remember that was quite negative, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 billion. And here when we look at just the last 30 minutes of data, that is slightly positive. Right now it shifted negative, so minus 3 million. So slightly negative. So if you were looking for a long set up or reversal, the place to do it would have been the lower daily expected move. Now it really remains to be seen what happens. Let's take a look at Nasdaq. I'm going to go back to the, so yeah, that is minus 1.9 billion for the total signal. This is typically what I look at. I trade mostly in the morning and this is what I look at and I look at the trend for the day. Let's take a look at Nasdaq. So Nasdaq continues to be bearish. Let's zoom in a little bit. Let's take a look at a 30 minute rolling window period. So that shows more of an up move. It's still negative, but helping to support the move higher. Let's go take a look at book map. We'll take a look at the Nasdaq. So now back above the lower expected move for the week, the purple line. It looks like the QQQ349 level as well as the NQ350 level did act to support and there are a few larger traders coming in with iceberg orders, but cumulative volume delta and stop orders continue to be negative. NQ making higher highs since about 140, something like that. Let's zoom out. So any remaining shorts from the morning, it looks like now might be a good time to take them off, take your profits. Certainly the lower edge of the expected move for the week would have been a good long term target. Let's just see what that QQQ350 level is. QQ350 is a large Gamma 3 level that's shown right there. Go back to the S&P 500. It looks like the reversal continues. Again, similar to the Nasdaq, this lower daily expected move would have been a good place to take off your shorts. Whether it's futures, options or shares. Let's take a look at some of the stocks and see if they're, see what they're doing. Go to Apple, not really much of a reversal higher in Apple. In RJS, what did I have as the daily expected move range in NDX today? That is not something that I calculate. For NQ, I had plus or minus 113.5% of the QQQ, plus or minus 113.5% points. So that's what I, that's all I use for Nasdaq. And for AMD, it looks like a lot of aggressive buyers coming in. You can see all the green volume dots there and not much of a rebound in Amazon. And Floyd's Garage asks, can C pulling orders on book map spoofing? I assume you're referring to the S&P 500. At any rate, that is not, that is not typically the level that I look at. I'm looking at a larger time frame, trading for bigger moves, bigger picture. That is Bruce's expert area of expertise. Pulling orders, spoofing, looking down at that level. He is the absolute expert at that. And Bruce is the director of education at book map. And he has a live webinar where he looks at detail in detail at the S&P 500 futures Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m. So, you know, if you're interested in looking at that level of detail, I highly recommend Bruce's webinar live free daily on Discord and book map YouTube channel. So really not much of a worry. The rebound here in the orange cap tech stocks, you know, it looks like maybe traders are coming to their senses about AI realizing, you know, something interesting but may not, you know, may not be financially viable for quite a while. I don't know. So anyway, they're coming to their senses. Google, it looks like I forgot, did not update all of my levels in QQQ, but that is no longer the absolute gamma strike. The absolute gamma strike is now at 355. And Floyd Scrogg says, we're just wondering because he thought it was illegal. I think it is, but this is, again, Bruce's area of expertise. And finally, let's take a look at Tesla. So Tesla trying to make a little bit of rebound here. Let's go back and take a look at the S&P 500. So far, I would say that water flow continues to be bearish. I don't see other than the rise in iceberg orders. CVD continues to be flat here, stops as well. Take a look at NASDAQ and not much of a rebound. Pretty similar to the S&P 500. Both the stop orders and cumulative volume delta remain quite negative. There are some large traders buying with iceberg orders. Does not seem to have much of an impact. Let's go see what options traders are doing again. And remember, we're in a 30 minute look back period here. So it looks like now options traders are starting to fade this move. That could be just another swing. But for right now, it is negative. Let's see what they're doing in the S&P 500. Also starting to shift lower. So they've stopped taking positive delta positions. I'm just going to go back to the one day look back period. And definitely continues to be very bearish for the day at minus 1.93 billion. And all right, so not a lot of sign for reversal here. Interesting day. The clues were very apparent for the short setups in both the NASDAQ and S&P 500 especially with the reversal at the call wall today. SPX 4300 call wall. And again, a good place to take profits for the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ was the lower weekly expected move right here, the purple line and for S&P 500 at the lower daily expected move. And in YouTube, take profit says, hi, Doug. I think today's spot gamma levels don't match the one on the indices tab for SPX. Let's just take a look at that. There have been some discrepancies in the data the last couple of days. So let's go take a look at that. So this is what I'm using today for SPX. Absolute gamma strike and call wall at 4300. Put wall at 4,000. Volatility trigger at 4195. What I like to do is go confirm those levels. If I have any question, I'll confirm the levels. Let's go to SPX and take a look at the absolute gamma levels. So here's the 4300 level. That's pretty obvious that that's the absolute gamma strike. And that is also the call wall. And I think that is also pretty obvious. So check for the call wall, check for the absolute gamma strike. And then the put wall at 4,000. And you could go through and calculate all the numbers. But I'll believe that. You'll believe what is shown in the chart. So the numbers look correct for SPX. So Trubin asked to use the SPX call and put wall and convert the values for the S&P 500. Well, first of all, yes. So I showed before the easiest way to do this is just a simple calculation that you can put in a thinkorswim, here in a thinkorswim watch list, slash ES minus SPX 5.71. So what I do is I have my own cloud notes. So let's go back to book map. These are my cloud notes. And what I do is, let me go to my spreadsheet here. And this takes a little bit of time but it's not too bad. I want to show the spy levels and SPX levels and the daily and weekly expected move on one chart. So what I do is show the, this is for ES. And this is using a price line add on in the book map marketplace that uses cloud notes to show these levels in this column as well as draw the lines. So here are the spy levels. And then also I have a script that converts ES to spy. And that number changes a little bit every day. And right now I had that number as 10.019. So I just, I calculate those numbers by hand, put those in. So that's the spy levels. And then the, here are the SPX levels. And I'm just adding five. And then here are the lower, weekly and upper, weekly, lower and upper, weekly and daily expected moves. So I rely on my own notes primarily. And sometimes the for example, the ES to SPX calculation that book map uses is a little bit off. So I calculate it like I just showed you in that watch list. I just take the number from the watch list and add it, you know, convert the numbers in my spreadsheet. That's part of my morning preparation. So I jot down the levels of my notebook. I update my spreadsheet. And then I, you know, I read the AM founders note. So that's how I prepare in the morning. All right, so it looks like there's prices resolving lower here for the S&P 500, moving lower, 4275 level did act as resistance. Now for NASDAQ prices below the lower, weekly expected move again. All right, my time is up a little bit over. Interesting day to day, great great downtrends, great short setups. And just about anything you want to look at S&P 500 NASDAQ large cap tech stocks. And I want to thank you for your questions and comments. Thanks for watching. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye.