 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 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. Disclosure, training futures, equities and options involve 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. Also in Bookmap Discord there's an Options-Doug Chat channel that's a great place to post questions, comments and content related to the topics of my presentation and the topics of the channel which I'll go through in just a moment. And note that Bookmap Discord is free and available to everyone whether you have a Bookmap subscription or not. There's a lot of great content there. Alright, I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter. My name there is at Doug Pless. The focus of my presentation today and the focus of the Options-Jug Chat channel is options order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. 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 to 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. I look at real-time motor flow and 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 and those setups can be taken any number of ways. For example, the SB500 setups can be taken with ES futures, SPY shares, SPY options, SPX options, or even ES options. Questions and comments are welcome and I will be watching both the chat and the Options-Jug Chat channel and Discord and also the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. Please feel free to post and I will do my best to answer your questions. And hello, Floyd's Garage. Welcome. Glad you're here. Also, hello, Don. Welcome. Good afternoon to you. Well, glad you're here. All right. My agenda for today, Friday, November 17th. First of all, I want to go over news items, economic data, and events for today. Then I'll go through my positional analysis. Then I'll review some setups earlier today and then I'll take a look at the live market. And all right, so let's get started with news. Obviously, the big news for today, a big event, is the monthly options expiration. Let's take a look at that. What this chart is showing is the Delta Notional. It's the expiration concentration chart for the SB500, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000. All combined into one chart. This is showing Delta Notional on the vertical axis and the different expirations on the horizontal axis. This is the November monthly expiration. And this is the December expiration. You can see it's much larger. That's pretty typical of the quarterly monthly options expirations. All right, let's take a look at November. So what this is showing is call Delta with the orange bars and blue Delta with the blue bars. It's very obvious that this is a very call dominated options expiration. These calls have been stabilizing the market in a positive gamma environment. And the expectation is, as those calls expire, that some of that stabilizing force of that positive gamma will be gone. And that could lead to greater volatility. And typically, there's a little bit of a move down after a call dominated options expiration. Excuse me. So looking for some weakness or consolidation next week. And that may or may not happen. It depends on traders. This is a very bullish time of year. So we'll just see how that plays out on Monday. All right, so again, call dominated, very call dominated positive gamma options expiration. The typical expectation is for a little bit of a consolidation or slight move lower after expiration. All right, let's start with the positional analysis now. I'm going to go to the S&B 500. This is the S futures and book map. Before I take a closer look at this chart, I want to take a look at a larger time frame. I'm going to go to the SPX. This is a 30 day one hour chart. We point out the key turning points on this chart. I'll start with this Monday, October 30th. This was what happened over the weekend. Traders were buying a lot of puts, concerned about weekend risk. And on Monday, price started moving higher, implied volatility drops. This puts loss value. Market makers could buy back short hedges, and that led to a huge put banner rally. So at this point on October 30th, the market was very put dominated, negative gamma and gradually shifted towards a positive gamma environment. Then this is Friday, November 10th, magnificent seven rally. And also fueled by the CPI report on Tuesday that was much better than expected. And now it looks like price of the SPX is consolidating for the last three days, typical of a positive gamma call dominated options expiration. And again, that may loosen up a little bit next week. Being implied, volatility may increase next week. All right, so those are the key turning points. Let me point out the levels on this chart. First of all, the dash purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. And these are updated once a week, SPX trading well above the upper weekly expected move. The dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper daily expected move. And so far, SPX is trading inside of that range. That was plus or minus 26 points today. Both of these are based on the options market. Weekly expected move is updated once a week over the weekend. And then I update the daily expected move every day. All right, the dash red lines are showing these spot gamma levels. These are proprietary spot gamma levels available to spot gamma subscribers in a variety of platforms. This is thinkorswim. Let me point out the key daily levels. First of all, here's the put wall that's at 4,200. That's a strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support, not in play for today. And the next level up is the volatility trigger at 4,415. That is spot gamma's proprietary volatility 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 dealt exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. On the other hand, like SPX is trading now above that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. In a positive gamma environment, market makers have to trade against price to hedge their dealt exposure. And that tends to subdue or decrease volatility. All right, the next level up is 4,500. That's the absolute gamma strike. That's a strike with the largest absolute positive and negative gamma. That's where most of the gamma weighted open interest is concentrated. That level did act as support earlier today. And then finally, the last key value level is the call wall. And that's up above at 4,550. And that's a strike with the largest net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance. And note that level did move up from yesterday. It moved up from 4,500 to 4,550. So that's bullish. That call wall, that potential ceiling for price, has been moving higher now at 4,550. All right, there was one other shift in levels for the SPX. The volatility trigger did move down five points, really not significant. So the most significant shift higher for SPX was the call wall moving higher. All right, I know this is current price is obscured with all this information here. So let's take a look at a one day chart, or actually three days worth of data here in a one minute chart so we can see the levels that are played for today. Actually, let me zoom in on this just a little bit. All right, so that's three days worth of data, the dark areas. So here's that 4,500 level, SPX 4,500 absolute gamma strike, acting as support. And for a long time today, we'll see in just a moment, in book map that price was pinning to the spy 4,50 level, now moving higher. All right, the next level up is this combo L3 level at 4,522. All right, let's go to book map now. So in book map, I have my own cloud notes. So I can show SPX levels and spy levels, any other levels I want, all on one chart. So this is that 4,500 level, SPX 4,500 absolute gamma strike, acting as support. That was noted as a support level in the Spot Gamma AM Founder's note. Did its job almost to the tick, actually to the tick. This is the SPX shown in an ES chart. And there is a price difference between ES and SPX. It's somewhere between 13 and 14, so I'd use 13 today. That may be a little bit low, so that white line that 4,500 level should be up a little bit higher, so that 4,500 level did act as support. And then this is the spy 4,50 absolute gamma strike. And note how price was concentrated, oscillating up and down around that level for quite a bit today until it finally broke out around noon, broke above that level. You can still see that this is the area with the highest amount of volume, that's the session volume profile, showing volume since the beginning of the session, and my session begins at the open yesterday, so at 6 p.m. eastern time. And note point of control shown by this purple line is right below that level. And I did post a couple of charts in book map earlier today, one for the ES and one for NQ. We'll take a look at NQ in a minute. All right, so those are the levels of play for today, both SPX and spy levels. Also note the quick drop started right before the cash open, and then the 450 level caught that. Now it looks like the spy 4,51 level may be acting as resistance. You can see the liquidity in the order book here earlier. It looks like traders did consume that. Maybe some of it was pulled. Those are resting limit orders above price limit orders to sell. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ now. And by the way, one other thing just to point out that if there was going to be a drop from 450, it looked like that may happen around, it might have happened around 11, but this 4,500 level was there to catch it. So for price to move lower, it would have to move lower than the 450 level and the 4,500 level. All right, let's go to NASDAQ now. This is the NQ futures in book map. Very similar chart to the ES. Before I take a closer look at this chart, I just want to take a look at an NQ chart first so we can isolate the QQQ levels and play. So 385 is the absolute gamma strike for QQQ. Very similar to the SMB500 that was oscillating up and down around the spy 450 absolute gamma strike this morning. The NASDAQ was oscillating up and down around the QQQ 385 absolute gamma strike. Price broke higher, found resistance at 386, then support just above this combo level. All right, let's take a look at NDX now. In NDX, this three days worth of data, there's a combo level just right around the QQQ 385 level. Then here's that combo level up above. Combo levels combine, in this case, QQQ and NDX, gamma weighted open interest into one level that's converted to an equivalent NDX price. Let's go back to NQ. So I have my own cloud notes in NQ as well, so I can show NDX levels, QQQ levels. There's the 385 level, scrunch this just a little bit. So what was happening this morning, let me zoom in on this. This was making for a pretty interesting range bound trade. Here's the upper weekly expected move, acting as support. And then VWAP, acting as resistance with a slight bearish tilt, making a series of slightly lower highs, slightly lower lows, but multiple trading opportunities from the upper weekly expected move to VWAP to back down, up and down. So if that's the kind of trade you like, that was a pretty interesting setup that multiple up and down range trade between, again, VWAP and the upper weekly expected move. All right, so those are the levels of play for NASDAQ. All right, let's take a look at Gamma Notional now to see how market makers were positioned on the Gamma curve at the beginning of the day. This is Gamma Notional. This is what I'm looking at for the SB500, NASDAQ and Russell 2000. First of all, for the SB500, both these numbers are positive for SBX and SPI. This indicates for an index that traders are short calls, market makers are long calls, and in a positive Gamma environment, when they're long calls, they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure, and that tends to subdue or decrease volatility, leads to more range bound trade and pinning. All right, for the NASDAQ, both the NDX, QQQ, NDX is really not significant. NDX and QQQ, both positive but less positive than yesterday. And then finally, the Russell 2000 shifted back to negative from positive yesterday to negative today, so slightly negative Gamma for the Russell 2000. All right, let's take a look at the Vana model now to get graphical representation of what this means. So I'm going to go through the Vana models, and then we'll take a look at the absolute Gamma charts for today. So first of all, the Vana model, what this chart is showing is market makers Delta Notional. Their delta exposure on the vertical axis, spot price for SPX on the horizontal axis, there are two curves on this chart. The first light gray curve shows how market makers Delta Notional changes with changes in price only. The purple curve adds implied volatility to the equation, showing how market makers Delta Notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility. And that's the curve that we want to take a look at. All right, so let's check on price for now, right now. SPX trading right around 45.14, so that's right around here, right at the bottom of the curve between these two lines. So at this point, there's really no Vana headwind or tailwind as price moves in a narrow range. If price continues higher, market makers Delta Notional will start to increase, and they will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. That's typical on a positive Gamma environment. Market makers trading against price to hedge their delta exposure. And if price falls, they can buy back their short hedges, or they can sell their long hedges. All right, so they're trading against price either way in this positive Gamma environment. I'm sorry, I said it right first time. So as price moves up, they have to sell futures. They're trading against price. Price drops. They can buy back their short futures. All right, so that is SPX. We'll take a quick look at SPI. SPI trading right around 451. Also near the bottom of the curve, if price continues to increase, market makers will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. Price drops, they can buy them back. And note this curve with the skew, kind of the V-shaped curve is very typical of a positive Gamma environment. Take a look at QQQ. Trading right around 386. Also near the bottom of the curve. All right, let's go back to SPX. What I want to point out is this absolute Gamma. What this chart is showing is Gamma on the vertical axis. Strike price on the horizontal axis. This is the 4500 strike. And that is very obviously the strike with the largest absolute positive and negative Gamma. Call Gamma, show them with the orange line above the zero line. Put Gamma, show them below the zero line with the blue bar. As price moves up above that level in a positive VM environment, market makers will need to sell futures. Price moves below that level. Market makers will need to buy futures. That can lead to a pinning effect around these levels. So that's why the 4500 level is so important. That may change next week as some of this Gamma expires. And traders position themselves for the next expiration, position themselves for the end of the year. Let's take a look at SPI. SPI, there's the 450 level. Again, obviously the level with the highest amount of put and call Gamma. Note here, there's more call Gamma than put Gamma. Let's take a look at QQQ and there's the 385 level. So those are levels that I was talking about in my post and discord this morning. All right, let's take a look at some setups now. So first of all, my thesis for the day was looking for lower volatility range day. All right, so let's take a look at some setups for today. I'm going to start with the SMB 500. This is the hero signal. I want to see what options traders have been doing today. So everything that I've looked at so far today, other than the bookmap charts, has been static data. This is based on open interest that's updated once a day, sometime during the night. Spot Gamma applies their own proprietary algorithms to these levels to come up with their levels. So again, that is all static data. It is updated once a day. It's available to subscribers sometime in the morning or early in the morning. I use it in my preparation before the market opens. All right, so this is the, let me back out. This is the hero signal for the SMB 500. What this chart is showing is price for SPX with a white line and the hero signal hedging impact real time options. What that shows is options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal of SPX by XSP and ES futures. And a rising line indicates traders are taking positive delta positions. A falling line indicates traders are taking negative delta positions. So the direction of line is in terms of delta. All right, let's zoom in on this chart now. So really in the morning, there was no not much clarity with that pinning around 450, the test of SPX 4500. And then right around 1145, traders started taking positive delta positions and price responded higher. Maybe that was after the European close. All right, let's see what they were doing. So when you separate outputs and calls, calls shown by the orange line, puts shown by the blue line. Falling blue line indicates they're buying puts. That activity stopped about 1145. They were also selling calls. That activity also stopped, so they started buying calls. So right around 1145, they stopped buying puts, started buying calls, and price responded higher. So when traders buy calls, market makers sell the calls, and they have to buy futures to hedge their delta exposure. Let's go take a look at book, ma'am. Go back to ES. So we know around 1145, traders started taking positive delta positions. And before that, price for ES was making a series of higher lows. And then right around noon, broke out of this wedge pattern. The volume dots are showing market buy minus sell. Magenta dots indicate more sellers than buyers. That's a delta. And then the green volume dots indicate more buyers than sellers. So price broke out right around noon as traders started buying calls, stopped buying puts, and did a retest, not quite to the 450 level secondary entry point. And now the S&B 500 continues to move higher. Looks like it's broken above the SPY 451 level and maybe heading to a couple of combo levels up above. Not much liquidity at those levels. There's a little bit at 4522. Let's go back to HERO. So HERO continues to trend higher. Traders continue to take positive delta positions. And again, they're buying calls. So call buyers more aggressive than the put buyers afternoon in this afternoon. So that's the S&B 500. Really not much to do. I just sat on my hands, looked at other things during the morning session. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. Interesting HERO chart here. So this chart is showing a combined signal for NDX QQQ. QQQ typically makes up most of that notional value. So the HERO signal was pretty much flat line to about 1145. Started to tick up. Looks like price started moving higher before that. Let's separate outputs and calls. So right around 1205, they started buying calls. There's another signal that's very relevant for the S&B 500. This is the Magnificent 7, usually a better indicator actually. And it certainly has been today. So what this chart is showing is a combined signal for these stocks known as the Magnificent 7, Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla. Let's zoom in on this chart. So there's a very, very strong correlation between options trades, market-maker hedging activity, and price action for these seven stocks. HERO starts ticking higher just after 11, 1105, something like that. That's about when the NASDAQ started moving. We'll go back and check that. So pretty much sits around, well, really almost from the open 940, traders have been selling puts. Very interesting, that's shown by the rising blue line. Then when price really started to move higher around 1105, that's when traders started buying calls. SpotGamma has noted that this signal where both lines, the put-in call line, are moving in the same direction, is a very powerful directional indicator. Really hard for whatever instrument you're looking at to fight this when traders are buying calls and selling puts. That's a very good signal that price is going to move higher. So really it often helps to separate out puts and calls to see the total signal. And also take a look at this Magnificent 7, whether you're trading, especially if you're trading NASDAQ, but also for the S&P 500. All right, so those are the setups for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, all confirmed with options trades. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ in Bookmap. So we know that Magnificent 7 stocks, heroes started moving higher right around 1105. And that's about when NASDAQ started to move higher. We'll go back and take a look at Bookmap in just a moment, even though the hero signal for the NASDAQ didn't start taking higher until about 30 minutes later. All right, let's go to Bookmap, go to NASDAQ. All right, here's when, let's actually zoom in on this a little bit, 1105. This is when traders started taking positive delta positions in the Magnificent 7. That's the final test of the upper weekly expected move. You can see the shift in order flow, but gentile volume dots on the way down. Aggressive buyers start to come in. Some final chop around the 385 level. Price moves higher, finds resistance at 386. Comes back down for a nice pullback entry final test. Somewhere between VWAP and 385. Now continues to move higher. 386 was resistance, now support. And moving up to the 387 level. All right, that's the S&P 500 and NASDAQ took quite a while for price to move out of that consolidation for both. So if you were patient, finally good long entries especially NASDAQ, but S&P 500 also. All right, let's take a look at some stocks. And I posted this this morning. I'm going to go to Equity Hub for and show my watch list. And what I was looking at is this next X-Bread Gamma percent and the date. So what this is showing, this is the amount of gamma that's expiring. And this is the date today. And that's typical of a monthly expiration. A lot of stocks will have the largest amount of gamma expiring on the Friday of monthly options expiration. I'm going to go to, I'm just going to take a look at one of these, actually we'll take a look at a couple of these charts. So earlier NVIDIA was it, let me still not ranking it correctly are there. So NVIDIA at the top of this chart, this is the composite view showing an area of call domination with green, an area of put domination with red. These lighter shades indicate smaller position size. But note the call domination above the call wall. Let's just check on that level. At the 630 strike, let's just take a look at one other stock. Take a look at AMD. So the darker colors indicate a larger position size and form AMD call domination above the 120 call wall key gamma strike. And I like to focus on any stock with greater or close to greater than 30% of gamma expiring. That's what SpotGamma's talked about. All right, so we're going to go through these stocks pretty quickly. Let's start with, let's go to hero. We'll go to NVIDIA first. We'll just go in the order of the list. So what I'm looking for in this case is a call gamma unwind. What that means is traders have been buying calls. Hence those areas of call domination. Traders, traders buy calls, market makers sell the calls. They have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure. As expiration approaches, those calls start to lose value. They lose delta due to charm. That's the change in delta as expiration approaches with the change in time. And market makers can sell their long stock edges if traders are not continuing to buy calls today. And that could be the case. So we'll just go through these stocks. When I took a look earlier today, there were about four out of eight that were showing a decent call gamma unwind. So 50% level, 50% hit level. So let's take a look now for stock on the list, NVIDIA. And earlier today, there was a little bit of a move down. And now NVIDIA is recovering right around the same time as we saw on the NASDAQ. So let's go to BookMap. And we'll just go through these stocks. And sometimes this can happen on Monday. So move lower in the morning. It'll look like there was going to be a call gamma unwind here. And then around 11 to 5, traders started buying calls. And price moved back higher with the Magnificent 7. So that's NVIDIA. The next AMD. Go back to Hero. Take a look at AMD. So price has moved up and down around this 120 level all week. Call walk, key gamma strike. And AMD, no call gamma unwind for you. Separate outputs and calls. So today, traders have been selling puts. Show them the rising blue line. And up until about noon, they were buying calls. This may be more clear with the total signal. Sorry about that. Nothing I did. So bigger move up in the morning. Whoops, wrong tool. Bigger move up in the morning, typical pattern. Options traders take the foot off the gas price. Slows down, consolidates. Let's go to BookMap. Remember, 120 is the call walk, key gamma strike. Mostly aggressive buyers in here. Show them why the green volume dots. No call gamma unwind for you. The next on the list, Netflix. And Floyd Scratch asked, call gamma unwind as for SPX? Could be. That's what I talked about earlier today. And a call dominated expiration. Those calls that have been stabilizing the market can expire, and that leads to some decreased stability, more volatility, and potential for consolidation or a move lower after a call dominated expiration. All right, so Netflix, opening print at around $467. Probably still trading below that level. Let's go take a look at Hero for Netflix. Not really much of a call gamma unwind. Next Meta. All right, traders continue to buy calls. That started to accelerate on the last 30 minutes or so. Traders aggressively buying calls into the close. They've also been selling puts. Show them by the slight positive notion of value of the blue line. Here's Meta. So another bullish day in Meta. No call gamma unwind. Next, Tesla. Bullish day in Tesla. See what options traders are doing. So selling puts and buying calls. Looks like put sellers are having a stronger influence on price. Sorry about that. Next, Microsoft. A little bit of a call gamma unwind early in the morning, but Microsoft reversed higher with the other Mag7 stocks. Go to BookMap, Microsoft. So initial call gamma unwind earlier today. Oops, price recovers $1105. Now continues to move higher. Next, Amazon. No call gamma unwind there. Take a look at Hero. So traders are buying calls. Show them by the rising orange line. They're actually buying puts. Call buyers more aggressive, having a stronger influence on price. The last on the list was Google. So initially, a little bit of a move lower in Google. And now traders are taking positive delta positions around the same time as everything else. They started buying calls. They've also been buying puts. Notion value for both pretty small. Let's go take a look at BookMap. And for Google, the amount of gamma expiring was just a little bit less than 30%. I think there might have been some news about Google. All right, so really, not much of a call gamma unwind today in this very bullish environment. That may happen on Monday. We'll see. We'll talk about it on Monday. All right, does anyone have any stocks they want me to take a look at? I'll be glad to take a look at anything you want me to. Otherwise, we'll go back and take a look at the S&P 500 first, the NASDAQ. Very nice uptrend to this trend line. We'll see what options traders are doing now on the S&P 500. So far, they continue to take positive delta positions. Looks like that may be leveling off a little bit. Separate outputs and calls. All right, so they continue to buy calls. Let's take a look at one other thing. We can take a look at this next expiry. So these are options that expire today. So earlier today, that was making up a larger portion of the total notion of value. And then that really separated about 1230. Wrong tool. Separated about 1230, where traders started taking positions buying calls and longer dated expirations. So the green line is showing the zero GTE for SPX, SPY, ESS, XSP. All those instruments have options that expire every day. So this is showing, again, for the S&P 500, options that expire today. And the green line, the purple line, is showing options that expire further out in time, longer term positions. So that notion of value for the purple line, that all expirations, is much higher than the notion of value for the zero GTE traders trades. Let's go back to book map. All right, let's check NASDAQ. Another nice, steady uptrend. Let's see what options traders are doing. We'll do a quick check of NASDAQ. Then we'll go to the Magnificent 7. NASDAQ, heroes leveling off, options traders taking their foot off the gas. Same for the Mag7. So it looks like resistance at this 387 level. Let's separate that a little bit. So there's a combo level just above that, that NDX. That's in terms of NDX price. So a combo level just above the QQQ 387 level. All right, just a quick note about next week. I believe the FOMC minutes, I'll talk more about the week on Monday, the upcoming week. But just a quick reminder now, I believe FOMC minutes do come out. I believe that's typically on a Wednesday, three weeks after the FOMC meeting and announcement. And then in the United States, Thanksgiving holiday is next week. That's Thursday and Friday. Thursday, everything is closed. And then I think there is a half day market day on Thursday. I will not be streaming on Thursday or Friday. So I will be traveling both those days. I will be in chat on Friday, probably Friday afternoon sometime. I'll be available in chat, but not streaming. So no streaming next week on Thursday and Friday. I will be here on Monday through Wednesday. Back to the SP, having a very slow day. So question is now, will this uptrend trend line continue? It looks like 451 would need to act as support for that to happen. Let's take one last look at HERO, see what options traders are doing. All right, so for the moment, HERO has shifted lower. Separating outputs and calls, we can see that now it looks like traders have stopped buying calls, maybe started selling calls, started buying puts again. Take one last look at book map. All right, that's it. Again, the question remains, will 451 act as support? Will price continue higher? All right, my time is up. I want to thank everyone for watching. Have a great weekend, and I will see you on Monday. Thanks again, bye. And thank you, Take Profit. Have a good holiday to yourself.