 Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 PM 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. 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. Here's my contact information. The best way to get in touch with me is through Discord. My name on Discord is Doug P. In a Bookmap Discord, there's an options-Doug Chat channel. That's a great place to post questions, comments, and content about the topics of this channel, which I'll go over in just a moment. So again, Bookmap Discord, options-Doug, Bookmap Discord is free and open to everyone, whether you have a Bookmap subscription or not. And then finally, I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter. My name there is at Doug Pless. 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 and Spot Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And when I talk about setups today, I will be talking about setups in an underlying asset, like the S&B 500. And setups can be taken with futures, shares of stock, or options. For example, the S&B 500 setups can be taken with ES futures, my shares, spy options, SPX options, or even ES options. Questions and comments are welcome. And I will be watching both the Options-Doug Chat Channel and Bookmap Discord, as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. So please feel free to post. I'll do my best to answer your questions. My agenda for today, what I want to cover, first of all, go over news items, economic data, and events. For today as well as the rest of the week, then I'll go over my positional analysis, then I'll review some setups from this morning, and then I'll get to the live market. When I talk about the live market, if anyone has any stocks they want me to take a look at, please let me know and I'll be glad to do that. All right, let's get started. First of all, news items. Today, the GDP report came out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time. Let's take a look at the reaction in the S&B 500. Zoom out just a little bit more. So 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time. Initially, there was a quick move higher. Then aggressive sellers came in and moved the S&B 500 right down just above the SPI 425 put wall that did act as support later. So that was the GDP report. Came in just slightly less than expected and also less than the previous number. But it looked like it was pretty much in line. So that was the reaction to the GDP. Then tomorrow, PCE data comes out. That is typically pretty important data. That's what the Fed looks at. And that is also the end of the quarter, end of the month, expiration. Let's take a look at that. So this is the expiration concentration for the S&B 500, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000. And this is showing delta notional by expiration. And then this is the September 29 expiration tomorrow. The blue bars are showing put delta. Orange bars showing call delta. So this is, as you can see, a very put-dominated expiration. And it's small compared to the October expiration and then the December expiration. This is for a combined S&B 500 NASDAQ and Russell. But the point here is this expiration is put-dominated. And gamma notional has been very negative. We'll talk more about that in just a moment. So the point of this in a put-dominated expiration, those puts will expire. Traders of long puts, market makers of short puts. And as those puts expire, market makers delta exposure decreases, and they can buy back short futures. And that can help to fuel a put-vanna rally. And that is certainly what has been going on today. As prices increased, implied volatility dropping, market makers delta exposure is decreasing, and they can buy back short futures. So we'll talk more about that in just a minute. So Friday, again, PCE data at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time. There's also the expiration put-dominated. And then consumer sentiment is out at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. All right, let's get back to charts now and start with positional analysis. I'm going to start with the S&B 500. Again, this is ES Futures in Bookmap. And before I take a closer look at this chart, I want to take a look at a larger time frame. So this is SPX in a 30-day one-hour chart. I have marked the August 18th monthly expiration, put-dominated expiration, and then the September 15 expiration, call-dominated expiration. So the dynamic works both ways. Calls expire, market makers can sell their long hedges. So this downtrend began at the 9.15, the big monthly September expiration. And it looks like maybe reversing now with this uptrend that began yesterday. Let's take a look at the levels on this chart. So first of all, the dash purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. And it looks like yesterday, SPX traded right down to the lower weekly expected move just above that and reversed higher. So that's the dash purple lines. That information is available, should be available, in any trading platform that has an options chain. So this is just the expected move from an options chain. Then the dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper daily expected move. And it looks like SPX traded right up to that level. And it acted as resistance. We'll take a closer look at a one-day chart in just a minute. So let me point out now the spot gamma levels. These are proprietary spot gamma levels available to spot gamma subscribers. There's gamma weighted open interest. I'm going to go over the key daily levels. First of all, here's the put wall at 4,200. That's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. The next level up is 4,300. That is the absolute gamma strike. That's the strike with the largest absolute positive and negative gamma. So that is the level with the highest concentration of gamma. And then above that is the volatility trigger that is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level. Below that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. In a negative gamma environment, market makers have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. And note that SPX is trading below that level. And then finally, the call wall is at 4,500 today. That's the strike with the largest net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance. That level did move lower from yesterday from 4,600 to 4,500. So yesterday it moved up to 4,600 today, back down to 4,500. Not really in place, so that's not significant. So overall, the only shift in level for the SPX was the call wall moving lower. And otherwise, the put wall and absolute gamma strike volatility trigger all held steady. And I look at that as somewhat neutral to bullish, indicating traders are not looking for prices to move any lower. All right, so those are the key daily levels for SPX. Let's take a look at a one day chart. So we can isolate the SPX levels that are in play for today. And we'll take a look at the spy in just a minute. And really, the spy round number levels and spot gamma levels have been the key levels for today. So here's the daily expected move. Price did trade above that, but it has now moved back below. And then this is the 4,300 absolute gamma strike. Excuse me. All right, let's take a look at book map now. So in book map, I have my cloud notes. And I have the spot gamma levels. There's the 4,300 absolute gamma strike. And note, there is a pretty big point difference between ES and SPX. And today, I'm using 37.5. So it's somewhere between 37 and 38, so I just used 37.5. So SPX 4,300 is shown at ES 4,337.5. I also have spy levels on this chart. Like I mentioned, the spy levels have been key today, reactions at the spy round number levels. So let's just go over to a spy chart, and we can see that a little bit more clearly. Now I don't have the spot gamma levels marked on this chart, but 425 is the put wall. And note that it did act as support this morning, just after the cash open. 427 acted as resistance. Then support, 429 acted as support. And then the 430 absolute gamma strike and volatility trigger acted as resistance. So the spy round number levels and especially the spot gamma levels have marked the low of the day, the high of the day so far, and key reaction points, primarily the 427 and 429. Let's go back to book map to ES. So I have the spy levels on this chart as well. There's the 425 put wall that did act as support. And then the 430 absolute gamma strike volatility trigger that acted as resistance. Let's just tone down the heat map a little bit so we can see the price action a little bit more clearly. And I'll talk about setups in a few minutes. All right, so those are the levels in play for today, primarily the spy round number and spot gamma levels for the S&V 500. Shifts and levels. Again, I talked about the SPX. Call wall moving lower. And for spy, the volatility trigger moved lower from 440 to 430. All right, so that is the S&V 500. Minor shifts in levels. And again, I interpret that as neutral to bullish. All right, here's the NASDAQ and QFutures in book map. Focusing on the levels in play, I'm going to start with just isolate the QQQ levels. So here's the 355. This is a combo level. L3 level, combo level just above that, then 355. L3 level, 360. Orange gamma 2 level that did act as resistance. So the round number levels for QQQ have also been in play for today. 356, acting as resistance. 354 support. Some consolidation at 356, and then price moves higher. All right, let's take a look at an NDX chart, just for completeness, to see if there are any NDX levels in play for today. And not really acting as support or resistance. All right, so here's NASDAQ. And again, I have my own cloud notes. I'm showing QQQ levels. So this is the QQQ355 level here. And then above that, there's that combo level. And note that NASDAQ did trade above its upper day they expected move, and now has reverse lower as the 360 level acted as resistance. All right, so those are the levels in play for NASDAQ. Again, QQQ, round number levels, being key support and resistance, with 354 being right around the lower end of the day support level. And 360, definitely so far high of the day, acting as resistance. And again, we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes. All right, let's take a look at gamma notional now and see how market makers were positioned on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. I'm going to take a look at is gamma notional for SPX, spy, and QQQ. And the gamma notional for NDX is not really significant compared to the other. So I'll just focus on SPX, spy, and QQQ. Notice these numbers are all negative, quite negative. Gamma notional for SPX minus 1.394 billion for spy minus 2.74 billion. And then for QQQ, minus 1.02 billion. Note these numbers did increase, became less negative than from yesterday, but still quite negative. So what this means for SPX, spy, QQQ, traders are long puts. Market makers are short puts. And traders have been paying up for these puts. As implied volatility has increased, traders have been paying higher prices for puts. So traders are long puts. Market makers are short puts. As implied volatility drops, price increases. Those puts lose value, and market makers can buy back their short hedges. So when traders buy puts, market makers sell the puts. They have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And as price increases, implied volatility decreases, they can buy back their short futures. So let's take a look at a graphical representation of how that works. This is the VANA model. This is for SPX. This chart is showing market makers delta notional on the vertical axis, and how that changes with price on the horizontal axis. There are two curves on this chart. The first, the light gray curve, is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only. And then the purple curve is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility. And that change in delta with a change in implied volatility is the VANA effect. And VANA is a second order Greek. So let's see the lower the day for SPX today was right around 4265, so right around here. So what this curve indicates is price increases on the horizontal axis, and implied volatility drops. Market makers can buy back their short futures, and they're trading in the direction of price, and that tends to enhance or increase volatility, leading to larger trading ranges, more of a trend day, rather than a range day. Let's see where SPX is trading right now, right around 4296. So right around here. So there has been definitely a put VANA dynamic going on here. Again, market makers can buy back their short futures as price increases and implied volatility decreases. And that's something to always look for in a very negative GAM environment. That's why I look at GAM a notional every day. That's why I talk about it. It's important to understand how market makers are positioned and how they may react to changes in price and implied volatility. So let's take a look at SPI, the VANA model. So SPI, the low of the day, was 425 that we saw at the put wall. So again, put VANA dynamic going on here. Put VANA rally up to 430. Then finally, let's take a look at QQQ. Low of the day was right around 353.5. So put VANA rally again and QQQ. All right, so my thesis for the day was, first of all, looking for higher volatility, but potential trend day, bigger trading range, greater amount of movement, great for trading, and also slightly, well, really bullish, no too little bullish, looking for a put VANA rally based on, of course, the negative gamma environment, the potential for a put VANA rally, as well as the stability, especially of the put walls and the absolute gamma strikes for the S&B 500, as well as NASDAQ. All right, let's take a look at some setups now. I'm going to start with the S&B 500. First thing I want to do is see what options traders are doing today. So this is the hero signal, hedging impact real-time options. This is available to spot gamma subscribers. What this chart is showing is price for SPX that's shown by the white line and the hero signal. Again, hedging impact real-time options that showing options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal for SPX, SPY, XSP, and ES futures. So if you trade any form of the S&B 500, this is the signal that you want to take a look at. Let's zoom in on this chart. So just looking at the big picture here, this is showing that from the open, traders have been taking positive delta positions. That's shown by the rising purple line. Traders taking positive delta positions. And we'll take a closer look in just a minute and see what they were doing. They were buying calls. And then note that as that hero signal starts to move lower, it takes a while, but price responds lower. So looking at more detail, hero drops, hero rises, and price finally hits a potential resistance level right at the SPY 430 level. Absolute gamma strike volatility trigger, and then price reverses lower as traders are stopped taking positive delta positions and start taking negative delta positions. So let's take a closer look at what traders were doing this morning. So this is the cash open right here on the left edge of the chart, up until 12 o'clock, 12 noon, Easter time. All right, so we're looking at cash open until 12 noon. And let's see what traders are doing. So the rising orange line shows that traders have been buying calls. And pretty much from the open buying calls that levels off, price consolidates. Then around 1040, they start buying calls again. Price consolidates a bit more and then moves higher. Very close correlation between call buyers and price action today. And they've also been buying puts that's shown by the slightly falling blue line, as well as the negative notional value here. But call buyers more aggressive, $2.5 billion positive notional value versus minus $1 billion for puts. All right, let's go take a look at the book map. We'll go back to the SAP 500. Let's zoom in, take a look at the same time period. Actually, let's go look at order flow and see what clues were available. So we know that this 425, spy 425 put wall, is potential support level. It does its job, acts as support. Aggressive buyers start to come in. That's shown by the green volume dots. Those are volume dots showing market buy minus sell. It's a delta. So the green dot indicates there are more buyers than sellers. Vagenta dot indicates more sellers than buyers. So price pulls back and then starts to move higher just above that 425 put wall. Consolidates as call buyers take their foot off the gas and then accelerates as traders start buying calls again and aggressive buyers come in, shown by the green volume dots there and eventually up to the 430 absolute gamma strike. Let's go back to hero. Zoom out just a little bit here. All right, so this is the entire day. So again, price makes a high as traders buy calls and then they stop buying calls by a few more calls up to the 360 level. Then price moves lower. Now they've started buying calls again. The price is not responding. Let's take a look at the total signal. Let's go back to the total signal. All right, so much easier read in the morning session from 930 to 12. And the signals were definitely there for a long setup. Reversal at the 425 put wall as traders were buying calls and also aggressive buyers moving price higher. Let's go back to book map. You can see also right around 1030, cumulative volume delta starts to rise. It does shift from negative with the pink line to positive with the dark blue line. Also buy stop orders fuel the move higher that's shown by the rising yellow line. And note that large traders have been fading this move. They use iceberg orders to hide their size. And I like to look at this in the sub chart in some mode so I can see throughout the day that large traders have been selling net selling with iceberg orders. Again, they used to hide their size. So up at 930 to 12, traders are buying calls, market makers sell the calls, and they have to buy futures to hedge their delta exposure. There were also aggressive buyers as well as buy stop orders fueling the move higher to the 430 level. All right, that's the SMB500. Pretty easy read this morning with the expectation for a put vendor rally. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. So NASDAQ we talked about before, and also reacting pretty well at the QQQ round number levels rally from 354 to 360. Let's see what options traders are doing. And I'm going to take a look at a combined signal for NDX and QQQ, and not nearly as clear a read. So let's zoom in looking at the overall picture, not nearly as clear read as the SMB500. So this is about as much clarity that I could gather from this, from the hero signal for NASDAQ. So again, this is looking at white line showing price for NDX, and the hero line showing options trades, and market maker hedging activity for QQQ and NDX. So for example, when traders buy QQQ calls, market makers sell the calls, and they buy NQ futures to hedge their delta exposure. All right, so right around 1030, traders started taking positive delta positions, as shown by the rising purple line. And let's go back to NASDAQ. So there's the 1030 reversal hire, shift in order flow, very clear there. Aggressive sellers on the way down, shown by the magenta volume dots, and then aggressive buyers come in, shown by the green volume dots. And after a consolidation right around the 356 level, aggressive buyers start to come in again and take price up to the 360 level. Let's go back to hero, zoom all the way out. So this is interesting at, oops, wrong tool. So really net for the day, up until about 12 o'clock, the signal was pretty flat. When you step back, zoom out, take a look at the entire day. And then this hedging flow, options trades and hedging flow shifted pretty significantly. And it looks like price started to respond about 40 minutes later. Let's see what traders are doing today. So they have been buying puts all day. So one thing that could be going on is traders taking positive delta positions in individual stocks, AMD, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, and then hedging that with puts in QQQ and DX. So buying individual stocks or options in individual stocks and hedging that with NDX or QQQ puts. All right, so anyway, just looking at NASDAQ here, initially they were buying calls in the morning just like the SBX. So when we take a look, separate outputs and calls, we can see that traders were buying calls. Let's just take a look at one thing. Let me zoom that up until about. So up until about noon, the call buyers were more aggressive than the put buyers. Call buyers shown by the rising orange line, positive notion of value, 519 million. And put buyers shown by the falling blue line, the negative notion of value, at 273 million. So up until about noon, call buyers more aggressive. They take their foot off the gas, start selling calls, and traders also continue to buy puts, and then price consolidates and moves lower. Let's go back to book map, 360 resistance. Aggressive sellers come in, shown by the magenta volume dots, and price moves down from 360 to 358. All right, let's take a look at some stocks. So what I want to do today is go to my hero signal here. And I've ranked stocks in my watch list by the hero signal, from strongest to weakest. So what this hero signal is showing, and we use Amazon as an example, the entire length of this slider is showing comparing the hero signal for today with the last 30 days. And the hero signal for today is shown by this dot. So this is showing that the hero signal for Amazon is stronger than it has been in the last 30 days. And then the colored portion of the slider is showing comparing the current signal to the last five days. So the hero signal for Amazon is stronger than it has been in the last 30 days and last five days. So let's start there. Let's start with Amazon. So Amazon traders have been taking positive delta positions all day. And let's see what they're doing. So both the put line and the blue line, put line, and the orange line, call line, both positive notion of value. So traders are buying calls and selling puts. Put sellers more aggressive so that number is higher. Go back to the total signal. One other thing to note is this flow alert here. This is new. I think just released to the all users, Spot Gamma alpha subscribers on Monday. I've been a beta user for a while. So that flow alert signals unusual hero activity. All right, so let's go take a look at Bookmap. So we know traders are buying calls and selling puts. Let's go to Bookmap. And that alert comes in right around 10 AM. So let's go to Bookmap, go to Amazon. So a couple of pullbacks. In Amazon, definitely a lot of aggressive buyers here between 9.30 and 10. And the signal came in right around 10. There was a pullback to 1.23.50. And then prices moved higher up to the 1.26 level. So the point of alert was not perfect, but again, good for depending on your entry, two and a half points. Let's go back to hero. Notice how as options traders took their foot off the gas right around 11.30 price consolidated, then they have started to take positive delta positions again just after 1.30 and price may be responding higher. Let's go take a look at Bookmap again. All right, so I get the, it remains to be seen whether this is another oscillation around 1.26 or a price continues higher up to 1.27. Oops, sorry about that. Just looking for liquidity levels. So 1.27, 1.28, there's more liquidity there. And then 1.30, potential longer term targets at price continues higher. Let's go take a look back at hero. And 1.30 is the, 1.29 is the hedge wall. And that's the last, that's the highest level shown on this chart. 1.25 is the put wall. All right, the next on the list, NVIDIA, zoom in. This first of all note key levels. 4.30 is the call wall, the key delta strike, and the key gamma strike. 4.20 is the hedge wall. Let's see what traders are doing. So they are buying calls that shown by the rising orange line, positive notional value here. They're also selling puts, not nearly as aggressively as they're buying calls. Notional value for both positive. And note as they stop buying calls, they took the foot off the gas, maybe taking a little bit of profits. Price consolidated. So call buyers definitely helping to drive price and NVIDIA today. Let's go take a look at book map. Nice uptrend today, up above the 4.30 level that did act as resistance and now support. And note the high liquidity at that level. The book map heat map shows a history of limit orders. Typical for stocks, they come in at the cash open and stay in there until they're filled. So the sellers that were here, below price, those are limits, above price, those are limit sell orders, below their limit buy orders. So the sellers at 4.30 became buyers here. Now it looks like NVIDIA is heading up to the 4.35 level. Let's go back to hero, look at the total signal. Let's just focus on the last 30 minutes. So it looks like right around 1, 10, 1, 15 traders started taking positive delta positions again. And we can see that more clearly if we just look at the last 30 minutes of data. All right, the next stock that I wanna take a look at is Meta and strong day for Meta today. And this is the day after the event that Slow Desiree pointed out and there was a sharp move lower in Meta yesterday. It looks like traders have been buying the dip in Meta. Traders, options traders are, have been buying calls and selling puts, both notional values here. Orange for calls, blue for puts, both positive. Again, traders buying calls, selling puts. 300 is the key gamma strike. 297.50 is the hedge wall. Looks like the hedge wall acted as support. Looking at the big picture here, the thing to note is that call buyers, put sellers, took their foot off the gas and prices consolidating now. Move slightly lower. Let's go take a look at book map, go to Meta. So 297.50 is the hedge wall. It's right here. So somewhere around there acting as support and price moves higher as traders take positive delta positions, pull back entries along the way. All right, so let's go back to hero now. So again, just note that my expectation for the day was looking for neutral to bullish, watching these stocks, ranking these stocks by hero signal pointed to multiple good setups. S&B 500, this ES futures very strong signal, Amazon, NVIDIA, S&B 500, that's the total combined signal. SBX, Meta, let's go on down the list. So we've already looked at all the S&B 500. Go down the list to Google, also bullish today. Trading up above the call wall. So that's pretty bullish. We're actually, you know, earlier today at Google trading up to the call wall, very bullish. Netflix, Apple, very strong correlation between options trades, hedging flow and price action. Just like many other stocks we looked at right around 1130 to 12, maybe 1230. Options traders take the foot off the gas. Price consolidates or moves lower. Most definitely strong in the morning as traders were taking positive delta positions. AMD, another uptrend as traders were taking positive delta positions. It takes a while, but price consolidates move slightly lower as traders start taking negative delta positions. Tesla, also strong today. So in Tesla, traders are buying calls and selling puts. Microsoft at the bottom of the list and the total notion of value today for puts and calls is slightly negative. So net for the day, Microsoft traders are taking negative delta positions. All right, let's, anyone have any questions or stocks they want me to take a look at? Now it would be a good time. Otherwise, we'll go back to the broad market here. Go to the S&P 500. So right around one, 1 p.m. Traders started taking positive delta positions. So that's after taking the foot off the gas as price reached that 360 level or the 430 level, I'm sorry. 360 is QQQ and 430 for SPI. Let's go take a look at the book map. Go back to the S&P 500. All right, so it looks like S&P 500 may be finding support at the 428 level. Let's zoom in a bit. Let's go back to hero, zoom in. Let's take a closer look at the last, just 30 minutes of data change to look back period. Becomes a little bit more clear. Traders are taking positive delta positions. So it looks like the S&P 500 may be heading back up to the SPI 430 level, consolidating now below the 429 level. And so I would watch hedging flow, order flow, look for a pullback entry up to 430. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. NASDAQ consolidating at QQQ 358. Let's go take a look at hero, see what options traders are doing. NASDAQ changed the look back period. All right, so looking at the last 30 minutes of the data, the hero signal is definitely bullish. Traders taking positive delta positions. Let's see what clues we can find in order flow. So it looks like NASDAQ may be headed back up to the 360 level. And let's just do a quick scan through stocks, see if we can see any setups. Let's take a look at Nvidia. Let's go to book map. So we missed this setup here, where this 430 level acted as resistance, then support, pullback to 431. Now Nvidia trying to make it back up to the 435 level or fourth, it'll have to get through the liquidity at 434 and after that potentially up to 435. Let's go back and take a look at hero. Zoom in for the last 30 minutes of data. So again, looking from this point of view, the hero signal has turned slightly higher. All right, last call. Anybody have any stocks? They want me to take a look at any questions. All right, my time is up. I wanna thank everyone for watching. Thank you for your questions and comments. Remember tomorrow, PCE data, key data coming out, 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. Also the 929 expiration put dominated and consumer sentiment at 10 and we'll talk about it tomorrow afternoon. So thank you very much for watching and I will see you tomorrow. Bye.