 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, Limit and 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 the 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 questions and comments are welcome. I will be watching the chat in Discord, Options-Doug chat channel in Discord as well as chat and YouTube. And Floyd's garage says, hello, I can hear great, hear good, thank you. Glad you're here, glad, glad audio is okay. All right, my agenda for today, what I want to cover, first of all, go over news items, economic data, events and earnings for today and the rest of the week. Then I'll go through my positional analysis and then I'll review a few setups from the morning and then we'll take a look at the live market. All right, let's get started. First of all, news items. Today there were a couple of PMI releases, manufacturing PMI at 9.45 and 10 a.m. Eastern time and both were less than forecast, less than the previous numbers and less than 50 indicating contraction. And then tomorrow, Friday, the jobs report, the monthly employment situation report that comes out on the first Friday of the month is tomorrow at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. All right, let's get started with positional analysis. And I'm going to start with the S&P 500. First of all, this is the ES futures and book map, the S&P 500 futures. And before I take a closer look at this chart, I'm going to step back and take a look at a larger time frame. And this is SPX in a 30-day one-hour chart and showing that it looks like price is now heading back up to recent highs, which the recent high was 42.31. So it appears to be breaking out of the range. The 41.50 to 42.00 range. Let me point out a couple of some levels here on the chart. First of all, I've got the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the week, shown with the dash purple lines and the dash blue lines, showing the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the day. And note SPX is trading above that level. Here are other levels on this chart that I want to point out. These are from Spot Gamma. These are the Spot Gamma key daily levels. And they're provided to Spot Gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms here. Again, we're looking at thinkorswim. So first of all, here's the 4000 put wall. That's the strike with the largest net negative Gamma that can be expected to act as support. And that's not really in play today. And then the next level is the 41.50 level. And that is the absolute Gamma strike. And then above that, at 41.70, is the volatility trigger. And 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, they have to sell or trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. So its price falls, they have to sell. And then above that level, like price is trading now, SPX is trading now, market makers position on the Gamma curve is positive. In a positive Gamma environment, they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue volatility. So negative Gamma environment market makers trading tends to enhance volatility. And then on the other hand, in a positive Gamma environment, like the current environment, market makers trading tends to subdue volatility. And then the next level I want to point out is the call wall. And that's the strike with the largest net positive Gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. So those are the primary daily levels. Now let's take a look at another thinkorswim chart just to get an idea of the levels that are in play for today. So this is a one day, one minute chart showing the same levels. So again, SPX is trading above the upper edge, the expected move shown here. Also trading above the volatility trigger. So in a positive Gamma environment now, let's take a look at Bookmap. And in Bookmap, I have two columns of notes here for levels. First this is Spot Gamma Cloud Notes, again provided to Spot Gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms. For Bookmap, they're provided in the form of Cloud Notes. And this is showing combo levels, SPX and SPY, combo levels converted to an equivalent SPX level and then converted to an equivalent ES number. And right now it looks like Spot Gamma is using an eight point difference between ES and SPX. And I calculated a seven point difference today. So there's a slight difference. In my combo level here, the C3 level, one point lower, and this is my column of Cloud Notes here. So in my column, I'm showing the SPX levels, also the SPY levels. So there's the SPY 422 call wall that is expected to act as resistance today. So again, that's the SPY call wall converted to an equivalent ES number. Here's the upper edge of the expected move for the day for ES, a little bit different than SPX. And then I'm showing other SPX and SPY levels as well. So let's take a look at some levels that were in play for today and primarily SPY levels. So the SPY 417 level acted as support this morning and price reversed higher, just in between the SPX 4170 volatility trigger level and the SPY 417 level. And there was a pullback just below the SPY 418 level, then a brief pause between the SPY 419 volatility trigger and the SPX 4200 level, and then price has taken off again. And now it looks like finding resistance at the SPY 422 level. And we'll take a look at the live market in a few minutes and we'll see that options traders have been fading this move. Since about noon a little bit before, they've been taking negative delta positions as the ES, SPX, SPY approach the SPY 422 call wall. And keep in mind ES and SPX and SPY are just different versions of the same product, the ES and B500. So that's why I have all these levels shown on this chart. All right, so shifts in levels for SPX the volatility trigger did shift lower from slightly from 4175 yesterday to 4170. And for SPY the volatility trigger also shifted lower slightly from 420 yesterday to 419 today. The put wall did shift higher to 415. And then most significantly the call wall shifted lower from 425 yesterday to 422. So I interpret that as somewhat bearish. The ceiling potential ceiling for the S&P 500 has moved lower at that 422 call wall. All right, let's take a look at and again we'll look at setups and the live market in a few minutes. So those are the levels in play for today. And really the primary levels are the SPY levels, the 417 support, the SPX 4200 level that SPOTGAMMA noted as a pivot level this morning. And then meaning they would be bullish above that level and bearish below. Another way of looking at that is mean reversion around that 4200 level. So that would be just the opposite. And actually a weekend, let's go back to the. So here's the 4200 level and it seems to me there has been some mean reversion around that level. So maybe now this if the call wall levels move up tomorrow, maybe this this may be a bullish breakout. We'll see. All right, so that is the S&P 500. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. We'll go to the NQ futures and book map. There's a bullish day here and Q trading above the upper edge, the expected move for the day that's shown in my cloud note columns here. All right, let's take a look at a QQQ chart and we'll take a and think or swim and we'll just take a look at the levels in play for today. And primarily QQQ is trading well above the volatility trigger. So in a positive gamma environment, although it started the day in a negative gamma environment, negative gamma notional, and then the also trading above the call wall, which should act as should have acted as a resistance. All right, let's go back to book map now. So bullish day here in the NASDAQ and the support level this morning was the NQ 14250 and the QQQ 347 and then here's the QQQ 350 call wall and again prices trading above that right now. All right, so shifts and levels for the NASDAQ shifts and levels for the NASDAQ for the NDX, the put wall did shift lower from 13,750 to 11,000. And then for QQQ, the volatility trigger did shift lower from 349 yesterday to 346. And then most notably, the call wall shifted lower from 360 to 350. So I interpret that as somewhat various as well. So for spy and QQQ, the call walls both did shift lower. All right, so Floyd's garage and YouTube asked, so when goes above a gamma area? It will act as support. I'm not sure I understand your question. So the put wall, I expected to act as act as support call wall, I expect to act as resistance and then a volatility trigger or absolute gamma strike can act as support or resistance. All right, so those are the levels in play for today. For the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, I've talked about shifts and levels again, primarily the shifts lower in the call walls for spy and QQQ. Let's take a look at the Vantemodel now that will give us an idea of how market makers are positioned. Today, I'm going to take a look at the Vantemodel for spy. Spy, by the way, started out the day fairly negative gamma notional at minus 846, and we'll take a look at that in just a minute. So what this chart is showing is market makers delta notional or delta exposure on the vertical axis against price on the horizontal axis. Again, we're looking at spy and there are two curves on this chart. First, the light gray curve is showing how market makers delta notional will change with changes in price only. This is showing is above around the 422 level, which again, remember is the call wall, that market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure and that could contribute to somewhat of a mean reversion back to the 422 level. And then this purple curve is showing it adds implied volatility to the equation showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and applied volatility. And it is predicting that market makers will have less delta notional to hedge as predicted by the delta only curve. Then on the other hand, if price decreases, then market makers will have more delta notional to hedge. So in a negative gamma environment with price decreasing and implied volatility increasing, market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. All right, let's check where spy is trading now. Let's go back to this chart, the ES chart. So we see that spy is just under the 422 call wall. So let's go back and look at the Vana model and actually again, so spy traded up from the 417 level now up to the 422 level. So let's see where those levels fall on the Vana model. So first of all, this morning, so here is the 417 level. What I'm interpreting, what I get from this chart is from that level, there was somewhat of a Vana tailwind for spy for the S&P 500. So what this means is that this curve works both ways. So if price increases, market makers can buy back short hedges. Their delta exposure decreases and they can buy back short futures. So that provides a tailwind for price up to a certain level. So at the 422 level, this Vana model definitely starts to flatten. So here's the, this line right here, this is 422. So price has already gotten that Vana tailwind this morning and it looks like that is, that may end and as price increases, market makers will have to start selling futures to hedge their delta exposure. So again, this is showing that there was a Vana tailwind as market makers were buying back short hedges as price increased. So let's take a look at a chart of VIX just as a proxy for implied volatility and note that it has been falling all this morning. And Truman asked, is the right axis on the Vana model, the IV level? So the vertical axis is delta notional. So remember, market makers want to remain delta neutral. So as what these curves are showing is as price moves down or moves up, market makers delta notional will increase and they'll have to sell futures as price increases in a positive gamma environment or sell futures as price decreases. Blow around, you know, we look at the very bottom of this Vana model in about 423. All right, so Floyd's garage asked, do you look at SKU? And I, yes I do. And right now SKU is trading higher than it has been in quite a while and that provides a very good advantage for selling that, you know, that's kind of a measure of tail risk. And that to me, the way I use that is it provides a good advantage for selling far out of the money, far out on time options and then buying shorter term options. For example, selling far out of the money out in time like September puts and then buying short term 30 day put spreads to hedge those short puts. So that's how I use SKU and it is providing a very good advantage. And that SKU started to increase right around when the, I guess the, I don't know if I would call it a crisis, but the regional banking issue started in March. That's when the SKU started to increase. So that's how I use SKU. All right, so that's the Vana model. Let's take a look at one other thing. And I'm going to go to the gamma notional and spot gamma, gamma index. And this is for SPX, SPI, NDX, and QQQ. And the spot gamma, gamma index is a proprietary measurement of gamma. And that ranges from minus four to four. So slightly positive for SPX and negative for SPI. And then not much significance for NDX and QQQ. It's a little bit easier to read gamma notional. So these numbers are showing for SPX, market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day was slightly positive. And then more significantly negative for SPI. That's why I looked at the SPI Vana model today. Okay. And then also somewhat a little bit negative for QQQ. All right, let's take a look at setups. And first of all, I want to point out that today the move higher in the market seems to be pretty broad based. In recent weeks, the large cap tech stocks have been the primary drivers of price higher. And this is a heat map for the SAP 500 and showing that it looks like almost all sectors except utilities, which were strong yesterday, are contributing to the rally today. So more of a broad based rally today. All right, let's take a look at spot gamma hero here. And this is actually, let me just go back. So what this chart is showing is price in terms of the SPX and then hedging impact, options trades and hedging impact or hedging pressure, hedging flow for options trades in SPX, SPI, XSP and ES futures. Combined signal for the SAP 500. And let's take a look at some of the individual components of that before I take a closer look at this chart. So first of all, let's take a look at SPX. So we know this number is the notion of value is negative minus 731 million. Let's take a look at SPX. And that's positive 700 million, SPI negative minus 1.78 billion, and then ES futures positive, 295 million. So that nets out to this chart for the combined signal. I'm going to zoom in on the, just on the morning session here and remember the setup that I talked about briefly for the SAP 500 was a long and around SPI 417. So here is this divergence in hero. Hero starts to rise about 945 and then the SAP 500 follows about five minutes later right before the 10 AM data. And then also a secondary entry. If you waited until after the data was reported was at 1025. All right, so let's go take a look at book map at those two long setups. So 955 and 1025, we'll go back to book map. I'm going to zoom in on the, let's go until noon. So the morning, morning session. All right, so here's the first setup at around 955 just before the data. And note the aggressive buyers coming in here, large green volume dots, aggressive buyers come in as options traders are taking positive delta positions. Note the rising cumulative volume delta that is this dark blue line. And then eventually buy stop orders start to help the field to move higher shown by this rising yellow line here. And then here is the pullback and secondary entry. And note the shift in order flow there. Pink dots and then aggressive buyers starting to come in. And all that time, cumulative volume delta continues to rise. And then after this second pullback or this pullback at around 1025, then stop orders start to help to fuel the move higher shown by these small green dots. So this setup is something that I call a hero kickoff. And we'll go back and look at the hero chart in a minute. And it seems like with this setup, options traders seem to initiate a move. And then they, like the kickoff team, football team, they leave the field. And then the other, the offense or defense, in this case the offense, comes in and takes over. And they take the price higher. So in this case, the aggressive buyers shown with the cumulative volume delta, all the green dots as well as the stop orders start to move price higher as the options traders, the kickoff team leave the field. So that is a hero kickoff. All right, so that's the S&P 500 setups this morning. And price continues to test the 422 call wall. All right, so those are the setups this morning. Pretty good clear setups looking at order flow and hedging flow. All right, let's go take a look at, and what I mean by the hero kickoff is note the really the choppy action after those first two setups. You can see that after around 1045, hero is really choppy up and down. But price continues this steady uptrend driven by aggressive buyers and also by stop orders. So again, a hero kickoff there. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ now. And just like the S&P 500, this is a combined signal for NDX and QQQ. And again, the components are QQQ and NDX. And let's take a look at this closer. So this is somewhat like the S&P 500. Pretty similar setups. The long setup was a little bit more clear right after the open here. This divergence long. And then price responds right around 938. Then a pullback entry right around 950 or so. And then another entry around 1030. So there are three long entries, 938 and around. Actually, this was more of a continuation. Let's just take a look at 938 and 1030. So let's go to the NASDAQ chart now. And again, I'm just reviewing setups from the morning showing the key setups. So let's go zoom in on the morning session. So here's the first setup at around 938. And again, the NASDAQ found support between NQ250 and QQQ347. Note the very clear shift in order flow as price moves lower, aggressive sellers, and then aggressive buyers come in. And actually they come in a little bit before price starts to increase, giving you a clue that price was going to move higher. And again, we know that options traders were taking positive delta positions. And then here's the second setup just before 1030. Again you can see the same shift in order flow. And we know that options traders were taking positive delta positions. And what that means is market makers have to buy futures to hedge their delta exposure. And again, the shift in order flow, the green volume dots, aggressive buyers coming in. So those are the two long setups in NQ this morning. And targets, it looks like to me NQ is well above targets that I would have used. I trade the SP500 this morning. So they're 350, call wall, QQQ, call wall, first target, NQ, upper daily expected move, second target, and now NQ continues higher. Let's take a look at a couple of stock setups and then we'll get to live market. So the first one I want to take a look at is Apple. And note that Apple, the 180 level is the call wall. Let's take a look at hero. And I study a steady uptrend in Apple up to the 180 call wall driven by call buyers. That's shown by the rising orange line. We can also take a look at the notional value. So they're buying calls, that's positive 99 million. And they're also selling puts, that's positive 8.1 million. And it looks like the call buyers are really driving price higher there. So when traders buy calls on a stock, market makers have to, they sell the calls and they have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure. And that can drive a price higher. And it looks like, again, that price has reached the very obvious target at the 180 call wall. Let's take a look at the total signal. And it has somewhat, it was sloping up pretty sharply in the morning and then has still rising but just gradually and now has leveled off. All right, so that's Apple, call buyers, driving price higher. Here's Nvidia and let's go to full screen. So the call buyers are back. So the rising orange line shows that traders are buying calls, taking positive delta positions. And they're also selling puts, positive 472 million and positive 135 million, 136 million for puts. So they're selling puts and buying calls. Let's go take a look at BookMap, go back to Apple again. Apple 180 is the call wall, the target. And so far, traders are having trouble getting price above that level. And SecondWins ask, is 423 the call wall on spy? No, it's 422. All right, so that's Apple and here's Nvidia and it made it kind of reverse what it did yesterday. So made it up to the 400 call wall. Every bullish price action in Nvidia, notice all the green dots here, aggressive buyers. We'll take a look at Kimlet to volume delta. It should be a straight line up, looking at this dark blue line here. Straight line up from the opening. So traders are buying calls, selling puts and aggressive buyers are in here. So the call buyers are back and Nvidia and driving price higher. All right, let's take a look at the live market. We'll go back to the SAP 500. And now it looks like price is trying to get above the 422 call wall. And then the next level of resistance, that is the 4232, which SpotGamma was noting as somewhat the same level as the 422 call wall. It's not quite the same level. And then there's also this 4226 combo level. And above that is the SPX 4250 level. And note that larger traders are fading this move with iceberg orders that shown by this falling light blue line. So there's a larger, actually that was canceled. So they're canceling, but this is showing that iceberg orders, sell iceberg orders. But so far, the buy stop orders and the aggressive buyers are winning. Let's see what options traders are doing. So we'll go back to hero for the SAP 500. So it looks like they're kind of shifting to more positive delta positions. And then prices responding, or they may be responding to price. Let's just take a look at a, let's change the rolling window to 30 minutes. So I'm just looking at the past 30 minutes of data, and this provides more clarity. So about 1250, one o'clock traders started taking positive delta positions in the SAP 500. Let's see what zero DTE traders are doing. And this is very similar. So it looks like zero DTE traders are having a large impact on options traders, trades today. So these are, these are options that expire today. So traders are again, taking positive delta positions right now and options that expire today, and that may help to move price above the 422 call wall. And the reason I'm looking at that shorter rolling window, shorter look back period when this is a cumulative signal for the entire day and when this is somewhat flat, like it is now, it helps to change that cumulative period to a shorter time frame. Let's go take a look at NASDAQ now. And if anyone has any other stocks that they want me to take a look at, let me know. So here's NASDAQ. Looks like they may be starting, options traders may be starting to fade this move. Let's take a look at a, we're on a 30 minute. So this is the one day. Go to the 30 minute. Let's zoom in a bit. So so far, I would not read much into this. Overall, it's been bullish since around 1250, one o'clock, the same as the SAP 500. So let's go take a look at the book map. Let's go back. So so far, very, very bullish here for the NASDAQ. Note the buy stop orders, yellow line, continue to fuel the move higher. Now it looks like some larger traders are coming in with buy iceberg orders. Cumulative volume Delta continues to increase. Let's go back and take a look at at hero. So so far, the definitely the best trades were just to get long in the morning and hold a runner. Whether you bought calls, bought shares of QQQ or spy or bought futures. Let me just do a quick stack check on. And I'm just looking at a chart on another screen looking at tech stocks. I'll continue to rise. So now it looks like options traders are starting to fade the move in NASDAQ. And let's check on the SAP 500. Same for SAP 500, I'm going to go back. So we still need the 30 minute rolling window period to give us more clarity. All right, let's go take a look at book map. And again, if anybody wants to look at any of the stocks that I have here, just let me know. So we know that options traders are starting to take negative delta positions. So trading the SAP 500 has taken some patience today, but it has paid off if you got long in the morning. Spy trading right around the 422 call wall. Let's check the NASDAQ again. So a little bit more pronounced move lower and the negative delta trades. But note here, when they did that, they really didn't get paid. So they started taking long positions again. So this may be indicating just another chance to get long. So right now it looks like stop orders, CVD starting to level off, and now some larger traders. Excuse me, larger traders are starting to sell at $14,500 with iceberg orders. So BlockWizSBXES is at a call wall. With today's strength, do you see indication that it can act as support and push higher so far? So let's go back to the SAP 500 now. So that's a hard call today. So the SAP 500 has rallied strongly all day. And 422, the Spy 422 call wall is a natural resistance level. And anything beyond that, it's also almost 230. The RTH close is in an hour and a half, 90 minutes. And I would have to see how levels shift tomorrow. So that'll be the key for tomorrow. So if the call wall for Spy moves higher, then that would be a strong clue for higher prices tomorrow. So that's what I would be looking at. So again, for today, I don't necessarily see that much of a move higher. The money has already been made. If you got long around 417 or 418, Spy 417, 418, again, the money's been made. Those were the trades for today. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. So it looks like that 14,500 level, NQ14,500 level, has been acting as resistance. We'll see if that lasts. Let's see what options traders are doing. So for NASDAQ, they continue to fade. And you're welcome for the scripts. All right, so Florence Garage asked, could you repeat that? What would you be looking at for tomorrow? And I'm looking at shifts and levels. That's always what I look at. And if I expect the S&P 500 to continue higher, I would look for a shift higher in the Spy call wall, specifically. The SPX call wall is still up at 4,300. So I would look for a shift higher. Let's just take a look at. So this is the Spy absolute gamma levels. Going to zoom in on this. So here is the Spy 422 call wall. So if what I would look for, for a continued move higher, is to build call positions above that level. So I would look for a build in calls above that level, and specifically for the call wall to move higher. So what this chart is showing is absolute gamma levels. Orange bars are showing positive gamma or call gamma above the zero line. And the blue bars are showing negative gamma or put gamma below the zero line. So if I expect or tomorrow I will be evaluating this and I will be able to make a better judgment based on shifts in the calls above the call wall level. And again, specifically for an increase in the call wall. All right. So Block Wiz asked, he said he was able to put them in book map for NQ. And for one question, individual stocks like Tesla, AMD, do you manly put the levels? So let me show you what I do for stocks. Let's go to Tesla. So for stocks, I have an add on called price lines. And that is available in the book map marketplace. And I fill out a spreadsheet. And every day I can shift the levels. I used to add all of the levels for all the stocks that I follow. That just got too time consuming in the morning for all these stocks that I follow. So I just look at the hero chart for the gamma levels, spot gamma levels. But I just have the line shown here on the chart. So this is drawing, putting the labels. I just like to see where the round numbers are. And so this is just showing the round number levels. And then I mark the 5s and the 0s with red instead of yellow. But for SPI and QQQ, I do add the gamma levels. So just for those two stocks or ETFs. So let's take a look at SPI. So SPI, for example, I do have the call wall noted here. But I only do that for QQQ and SPI. And I do this manually. So I look at the levels from spot gamma every day. So for the SPI and QQQ, they're shown here. So I just change those in my spreadsheet. And you can use your own cloud notes or just do that manually. All right, so again, looks like the S&P 500 is up against resistance. That may be it for the day. The money's already been made. Great move from the 417 to 418 level higher up to the 422 call wall that appears to be acting as resistance. And options traders are fading the move higher in NASDAQ and the S&P 500 starting to take negative delta positions. So at the SPI 422 and the NASDAQ 14,500, in Q14,500. But again, the money's already been made, I think. Nice move higher in both indices. And then traders, again, remember traders were back buying calls. And we looked at two examples in Apple and NVIDIA. All right, tomorrow, remember the employment report at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. That's all I have for today. I want to thank you for watching. Thanks for your questions and comments. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again, bye.