 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, 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 on the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range for the day and a directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. And I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow and Spot Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And just to be clear, I will be talking about setups today in an underlying asset like a stock or futures, and those can be taken any number of ways. For example, SAP 500, you can trade futures, SPY shares, and SPY or SPX options, or ES options. So again, my analysis planning is based on the options market, but setups can be taken again with futures, shares, or options. And questions and comments are welcome, and I will be watching the Options-Doug chat channel and Discord, as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. So please feel free to, again, post your questions and comments. And my agenda for today, I'm going to talk about the economic data that was released today and any additional events and then earnings are over. And then I'll go through my positional analysis and then I'll review setups today, and then we'll go to live market. All right, let's get started. So first of all, today there were some news items, economic data, released this morning. And it was PCE and durable goods that came out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And it looks like PCE, all the different varieties, were all higher than forecast and higher than expected. And then also consumer sentiment came out, and I believe that was at 10 a.m. And that was also higher than expected. So that was the data for today. All right, let's start with, let's go to positional analysis now. And I'm going to go to the S&P 500 futures and very strong bullish day today. And before I dig into this chart further, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame. So second wins, hello, glad you're here. He asked, how strong is the 420 call wall on spy? And we'll see. It's already been tested once. And right now, and we'll get into this in more detail, the ES is trading between the SPX 4200 call wall and the spy 420 call wall. And there's a little bit of a difference there. And the ES is trading in between those two levels. So that level has been tested once, and we'll see. So again, right now, the S&P 500 is trading above the SPX 4200 call wall that I did expect to act as resistance. And it did act as resistance earlier today. All right, let's take a look at the larger time frame first. So this is the SPX, a 30-day chart showing price and key levels. So let me point out a couple of key levels. First of all, this is the dashed move line is the lower and upper edge, the expected move for the day. And note price is trading above that level. And then the dashed purple line, you can't really can't see the lower line here. It's right here. That's the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the week. And note that this is Monday right here. And it looks like overall SPX is pretty much unchanged for the week. With a large trip down almost to 4,100, and then back to 4,200, and maybe has found resistance there. Let me point out spot gamma levels. Excuse me, these dark red lines are spot gamma levels provided to spot gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms. And here these are for, again, think or swim in a 30-day one-hour chart. First of all, there's the put wall. And while I'm talking about these levels, I'm going to talk about changes in levels at the same time. And if anybody wants to see the source of these levels, I usually go to the absolute gamma levels. If anybody wants to see the source of these levels, I can do that. Otherwise, I'm just going to skip over that. So first of all, here's the put wall. That's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. And that did move up from Friday. Yesterday, Thursday, it was at 3,900. And today, it has moved up to 4,000. And then the absolute gamma strike is also at that level. It remains at 4,000. That's the strike with the largest absolute gamma. The next level I want to point out 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, they have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance volatility. On the other hand, like SPX is trading now above the volatility trigger, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. And in a positive gamma environment, they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue volatility. And that level remains the same from yesterday. At 4,135, it has not changed. And then the call wall is now at 4,200, right where the SPX is trading now. That's a strike with the largest net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance. And note that level did drop from yesterday. It was at 4,300 yesterday. And it dropped to 4,200 today. So I take that as bearish. Just on the surface just by itself, that's bearish. And anyway, at any rate, the ceiling for SPX has decreased from 4,300 to 4,200. All right, so that is the SPX. While I'm here, I'm going to talk about spy levels. And the only change in spy was the volatility trigger moved up slightly from 4,13 to 4,15. So spy is trading above that level as well. The last time we looked, it was trading just below the 4,20 call wall as Second Wins points out. All right, so that is a larger time frame. Now let's take a look at another thinkorswim chart. I'm going to go to a one day, one minute chart. So this is SPX, one day, one minute, showing the levels that are in play for today. I'm going to scroll down just a little bit. And this is the, let me point out levels here, lower and upper edge the expected move for the day for SPX. It's a little bit different than ES. And note now that SPX is trading above that level, trading above the volatility trigger, like I mentioned before, and also chopping around the 4,200 call wall. All right, let's take a look at book map now. So book map, very strong day-to-day. And the last time I looked, this is a fairly broad-based rally. We'll take a look at Marker watch in just a minute. So here, I'm just going to point out my, these are my cloud notes. And I have, there's the SPI 420 call wall, and then also the 4,200 SPX 4,200 call wall. So I have SPI levels and SPX levels, and then also ES levels on this chart. So those are the levels that are in play for today. And again, ES trading well above its upper daily expected move. And now it looks like maybe the options traders are finally getting their way. And the S&P 500 is moving lower. And we'll take a look at that with setups in just a few minutes. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ now. So very, very strong day at NASDAQ. And before I go further into this chart, let's take a look at QQQ here. This is a one-day, one-minute chart, again, in Thinkorswim showing the key spot gamma levels. And there were quite a few shifts in levels. Every level, every key daily level shifted. So first of all, for QQQ, the volatility trigger did shift higher and that shifted up to 337 from 332 yesterday. The put wall did shift lower from 325 to 300. And on the bullish side, the call wall shifted up from 340 to 350. So here's the call wall for QQQ at 350. And then the absolute gamma strike also shifted higher quite a bit from 330 to 340. So here's the absolute gamma strike. So those are the primary levels for QQQ today. And for NDX, there was a shift in the volatility trigger. It did shift lower. All right, so again, if anybody wants to see the source of these levels, I can do that. Otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and move on. All right, so here is NASDAQ, NASDAQ Futures and QFutures, and showing these levels again in my column of cloud notes here. So I've got QQQ levels, key NDX levels, and also NQ levels. So with a strong move today, NQ has sliced through quite a few levels. All right, one thing that I do want to take a look at is the VANA model here for SPX. And right now, we know that SPX is trading, let's say around 4,200. It looks like it may be a little bit less now, but right around here. So what this curve is showing is market makers delta notional, delta exposure, how it changes with price. And that is shown by this light gray curve. So this is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only. And then this purple curve is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility. And that is the VANA effect, the change in delta with a change in implied volatility. And what this is showing is if price starts to increase from here, market makers will have to sell futures. That's a positive gamma environment. In a positive gamma environment, market makers will be selling again as price increases, selling against price. And what this purple curve is showing is this curve is showing that they will have less delta notional to hedge as predicted by the purple line, the gray line, delta only line. On the other hand, if price decreases, they will have more to hedge. So in this case, in a negative gamma environment, they will have to sell futures to hedge with their delta exposures. Price decreases and implied volatility increases. All right, let me just check the current price of SPX. So SPX is about $4198 right now. So let's find $4198. So somewhere right around here. So at this point, the VANA curve is about flat. I'm looking at the purple curve. So if price starts to increase, market makers will need to start selling futures. And if price decreases, they will also have to sell futures. And second wind has asked, if 4,200 is breached, do you think a short squeeze will happen? Well, we'll watch water flow to confirm that. So anything can happen. All right, so let's go take a look at one other piece of data. Let's see. Here it is. So I'm going to look at gamma notional and the spot gamma gamma index for SPX, SPI, NDX, and QQQ. And note this, all of these numbers, well actually, SPX is positive, gamma notional, positive $62 million. So market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX is positive. And that did increase from yesterday. It was negative yesterday. And now it remains negative for SPI at minus $1.1 billion, but still became less negative than yesterday. And for NDX, the number is positive and did increase slightly from yesterday. And then for QQQ, it's positive as well. And it did change from negative yesterday to positive today. All right, so that's positional analysis. Those are the key things that I look at every day. And I just note this down in a notebook. I write this down by hand in a little table on my notebook every day along with support and resistance levels. So I note volatility trigger, put wall, call wall, absolute gamma strike, spot gamma, gamma index, gamma notional for SPX, SPI, NDX, and QQQ every day. And then I develop a thesis for that. So the thesis really for today was bullish NASDAQ based on the increase in the call wall and the absolute gamma strike for QQQ. And somewhat bearish, really, or less bullish, neutral for the S&P 500. Let's take a look at, again, I mentioned this is somewhat of a pretty much a broad-based rally and more so than yesterday. So tech is obviously leading all the major players. And then also it looks like financials are up. Energy is down a little bit. Consumer staples and utilities down a bit. Health care also down. But tech communications and consumer discretionary and also financials leading. So it's hard for the market to fall with such a broad-based rally. All right, let's take a look at some setups. And I'm going to take a look at Hero here first. And let's go to the S&P 500. And hold on just a second. I need to take a look at something here. OK, just needed to manage a trade. All right, so this is the hero signal, hedging impact of real-time options for the S&P 500. What this chart is showing is price with the white line and hero. This is, again, hedging impact of real-time options. Showing hedging pressure, hedging flow for a combined signal for SPX, SPY, and ES futures. And really giving a somewhat of a mixed signal today can be a little bit difficult to interpret. So there was a question in Discord earlier today about Hero and its impact. And I will tell you that the way I look at things for futures is kind of an order of precedence. And first of all, I wait order flow highest. That what I see in book map order flow. And the second most important to me is the levels, like the SPX call wall, SPY call wall. Those levels are also very important. And then Hero can be either a leading indicator or a confirming indicator and sometimes neither. So I did post. Let me just zoom in on something here. Actually, before I do that, let's take a look at the individual components. So first of all, this is the combined signal for SPX, SPY, and ES showing for a total one day look back period. And also showing all expiration, zero DTE options that expire today and next week, next month. Let's take a look at the individual components. First, SPX. And note that signal is pretty choppy, too. But overall, a net positive. That number is positive. Notional value, 174 million. And then, so that's SPX, SPY. And that is negative right now. Make sure I'm all the way out. Negative at around 235 million. And then we'll take a look at ES futures. And that is slightly positive. Still kind of a mixed signal here. Let's go to the total combined signal. And minus 42.75 million. So still a pretty choppy signal. Not giving a lot of clarity today. So that's why just looking at order flow and the levels provided more clarity, more detail. So let's do that. Let's go to book map now. Let's go back to ES. So ES, given the very strong rally today, there are a couple of indications here. First of all, just look at the order flow. A couple of primary targets. And the first is the upper edge, the expected move. For ES, ES stalled there briefly and then took off straight up to the 4,200 call wall. That did act as resistance. Price moved back down to the 4,200 level. That's ES 4,200. And then went pretty much straight. A couple of tests of the 4,200 SPX level, 4,200 call wall. And then up to the SPI 4,20 call wall. And note that the SPX 4,200 call wall level was noted as resistance in the spot gamma AM bounders note. But acted as a great target this morning. And there are a couple of indications to be aware of on the book map chart. First of all, this is dark blue line is showing cumulative volume delta, very bullish. Straight up, you can just see all the green volume dots on the chart. Market buy orders, aggressive buyers. And also note the rising yellow line here. This is showing my stop orders, fueling the move higher. And that, in my experience, is a very strong directional indicator. And I would not expect ES to roll over until that yellow line starts to drop down. And then on the other hand, larger traders have been selling this move. That's often the case. Larger traders with iceberg orders, shown by this light blue line, they use larger traders use iceberg orders to hide their size. And they have been fading the move, especially in the morning. And then one large block order here. Let's zoom in and see if we can see that on the on chart indicator. It appears to be this right here, about 1,300 contracts. All right, so the S&P 500, still chopping around the 4,200 to 420 level, the concentration of volume. This is the session volume profile over on the far right. And that is also where the point of control is, this purple line. Point of control, largest volume traded in this area, just right around and below the SPX 4,200 level. All right, so that is the ES futures. The key today was note the levels and order flow and book map. In second wins, ask, do call walls act as a magnet? So yeah, so any level of high gamma, high liquidity, can act as a magnet. And it certainly did today. And now, spot gamma does have stats that show that price statistically would trade a little bit lower after reaching a call wall for SPX. All right, so let's take a look at NASDAQ now. And a very strong day in NASDAQ, straight up from about the cash open 9.30 up until about 11 o'clock. And for NDX, the call wall, absolute gamma strike is at 13,850, well down below. And then remember that QQQ call wall is up at 350, moved up 10 points from yesterday. So very bullish for the NASDAQ. Let's take a look at hero for NASDAQ. And still a mixed picture for NASDAQ. Let's take a look. So this is a combined signal of NDX and QQQ. It is slightly positive. Now shifted slightly negative. Let's see what traders are doing. So no clarity here from, oh, that's on a 30 minute. No wonder. Let's go back and take a look at S&P 500. And I did not realize I had it on a 30 minute look back period. Let's just see if that changes things. So still very negative. This makes more sense. Sorry, I thought I had it on. That's why it was more wavy before, because it was just looking at a 30 minute look back period. So sorry, my bad. We're on the total one day look back period. And this makes more sense. Very negative today. Traders are options traders are fading this move. Again, I'm back on the S&P 500. And they are buying puts and buying calls. But the put buyers are more aggressive. But so far, the call buyers are winning. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ now. And the same story for NASDAQ. They are buying calls and buying puts. The put buyers are more aggressive. But the call buyers are winning. Let's take a look at the total signal here. Still just like S&P 500. Not really providing any clarity for day trading today. All right, let's take a look at some stocks. Typically for stocks, if you're using hero as an indicator, it does provide more clarity, more of a stronger indicator. So here's AMD, one of the better setups today. Assume in on this. Separate out, put some calls. So the rising orange line, I'm going to assume in just a little bit more. Rising orange line shows that traders were and still are buying calls. And the call buyers are winning. The number, notional value, positive $87 million versus minus $27 million for put buyers. Let's go take a look at book map for AMD. And I guess AMD is in the AI cohort. Nice setup here, reversal at this 121 level. Another entry possibility here at VWAP in 122. And a target at the 125 liquidity. And that's also the call wall at 125. So great long setup there in AMD, confirmed by hero in this case. So again, hero using that as a signal is often a lot more clear in single stocks than the indices. All right, let's take a look at a couple of other stocks. And then we'll get to the live market. So the next stock was Amazon. And you can really pick any stock. Any of these magnificent seven tech stocks in particular. But note the strong, strong order flow here. You don't even need to look at hero. Just see all the green volume dots, wrong tool. Very strong order flow, aggressive buyers. And let's go take a look at hero. So there's AMD, call buyers. We'll go to Amazon. Same story, call buyers, let's zoom in on this. Very strong correlation between call buyers and price action. Call buyers definitely winning here. And just let's take a look at. So really, this is not, I was just checking to see how the options that expire today are contributing to this. And according to this, not very much. So the green line down here, these are calls that expire today. And it looks like that's actually negative. So they're selling calls that expire today. And maybe they're rolling further out. So they're selling the calls that expire today and rolling out to further expirations. Appears to be what's happening. So very bullish in Amazon here. And let's take a look at NVIDIA now. And NVIDIA also very bullish after a very bullish week, especially after reporting earnings. Let's go take a look at book map for NVIDIA. Bullish order flow. Let me just check something on NVIDIA here. All right, so NVIDIA, call buyers, strong order flow. You can see all the green dots, green volume dots. Let's just check levels here for NVIDIA. So 380 is the key gamma strike. Let's see where the call wall is. We'll go to, so here's NVIDIA. Note the significant shift higher in the key gamma strike from 300 to 380. Also the shift higher. So the call wall now is at 400 from 330 yesterday. And then the put wall shifts up 100 points from 270 to 370. All right, so that's NVIDIA. Let's take a look at one more stock. Tesla, call buyers are out in Tesla. Again, you can see the strong correlation between hedging flow and price action for call buyers, rising orange line. Let's go take a look at book map. Very strong, very bullish today in Tesla. Very bullish order flow. You can just see all the green volume dots all the way up. Very strong cumulative volume delta. Let's check on levels for Tesla here. So Tesla is well above its call wall at 190. So it breached that call wall earlier today, also above the key gamma strike. All right, let's take a look at life market now. We'll go back to the S&P 500. And options traders continue to take negative delta positions. Go back to ES. So right now, it looks like the options traders may be finally getting their way. And so far, that 420 level spy 420 call wall did act as resistance. Let's just go take a look at the spy chart. And we'll confirm that level. So this is spy. There's the 420 call wall. And yeah, my level on the ES chart is about correct. That level did act as resistance. Let's go back and take a look at hero. And now, if there's anything that anybody wants me to take a look at, please let me know. Any stock or anything else, any future, let's go back and take a look at hero. So options traders have been bearish all day, buying more puts than calls. Now it appears the S&P 500 may be rolling over. Let's just take a look at VIX and see what VIX is doing. All right, VIX one day, interesting, has been rising since 10 AM. Let's take a look at the more traditional VIX. So VIX has been rising since about 11 AM. Let's zoom in on today. So still VIX is down for the day. But again, has been rising since about 11 AM. And Danny Boy asked, Doug, where did options traders think ES closes at today? Not sure how to answer that. They certainly hope it closes lower. Excuse me, all those put buyers. All right, so VIX rising price starting to finally follow options traders right now the total notional value minus $2 billion. And let's go take a look at book map again. And maybe the larger traders with their iceberg orders will get their way as well. Or this could just be a pullback. Let's take a look at NASDAQ and slight move lower. No gamma levels in play here. Again, remember the call wall is up at $3.50. And that's this yellow line here. That should be a white line. Appears to be obscured with the $14,400 level. Let me just take a look and see if I can change that. Go to my spreadsheet. I'm going to do a refresh here. All right, while we're waiting on that, there's a mention of Broadcom. Let's see if that is. So sorry, I don't see Broadcom in the list of hero-supported stocks. And I don't have it in book map. So off-the-chart trading, sorry, I can't show that. It's just not shown in the list of stocks that support hero. All right, so it looks like options traders for NASDAQ starting to join the party here, taking positive delta positions, still net negative for the day. Let's go take a look. Let's go back to the NASDAQ chart now. And same with the S&P 500 stop-driven rally. Note the rising yellow line here. And I would not look for any meaningful pullback until sell-stop orders start to feel a move lower. Let's see if it looks like I got my level straightened out now. So there's the 350 call wall up above. So that would be the, if price continues higher, that would be the final target for today, I would think. Let's zoom in on this. So right now, just looking at order flow, I would actually be looking for a long setup here, and potentially up into 350. Trend break up above the 348 level, or it looks like the good long was at the NQ 14300 level. More of the breakout at 348, QQQ 348, up to a target of 350. Note the shift in CVD here. You can see all the green volume dots. Let's go back and check hero. We'll change the, let's change the look back periods to 30 minutes, see if that gives any more clarity. Yeah, it does. So that really sets up somewhat of a divergence long here. So it did confirm a hero in a shorter look back period, rolling window period, did set up a short, and then here, divergence long with the entry point, additional entry point at the NQ 14300 level. All right, so Danny Boy wants to take a look at ES again. Let's go take a look at that. So again, remember now we're on a 30 minute rolling window period, and not as much clarity to me here as the NASDAQ, but hero is definitely moving up. Let's go take a look at book map, take a look at ES. So there's a long initial entry point. If you took the confirmation, actually hero divergence at the 14300 level, secondary entry at the trend break there at the QQQ 348 level, very bullish order flow just around the 348 level. All right, let's take a look at ES now. And ES looks similar. Shift to bullish order flow, note the increase in accumulative volume delta, also some buy stops, helping to fuel the move higher, and the target at the 420 call wall. So Danny Boy says, I think rug pull on this today, bulls get trapped. Don't see any evidence of that so far. Let's go back and take a look at, actually let's take a look at the NASDAQ first. So far bullish order flow continues to move higher. If you got in at NQ 14300 or around there, you're up about 25 points now, taking that divergence at the initial entry level. Let's go back and take a look at hero. And now for hero, S&P 500, it's turning lower. So options traders could be fading that move up to 420. Hero making a series of, makes a lower high, slightly lower high as price moves up. And now it's moving lower. Again, options traders fading the move up to spy 420. And so maybe Danny Boy is right. And I hope that that's the case. My longer term positions could use a little move lower today. My short calls are getting pressed. All right, let's go back and take a look at NASDAQ. And then on the other hand, this continues to be bullish. And great, great divergence long set up there. All right, Mark Brown asks, what is hero? It's actually H-I-R-O, hedging impact real time options. And that is something developed by Spot Gamma. It's provided to Spot Gamma subscribers. Hero stands for hedging impact of real time options. And that is showing market maker hedging flow responding to options trades. So for example, when traders buy calls, let's take a look at Tesla, for example. Going to go back to the total one day look back period. Separate outputs and calls. So here for Tesla, for example, when traders buy calls, market maker sell the calls. That's a negative delta position. And they have to buy Tesla stock to hedge their delta exposure. And that's what's shown here. And that can be a very powerful driver of price action. And that's why it's important. That's why I look at it. And if you want to know more about hero, I suggest going to the Spot Gamma website. You can take a look at their free resources. Also, take a look at the Spot Gamma YouTube channel. There's plenty of information about hero. So there you go, Mark. I hope that answered your question. All right, my time is up. Another interesting day, interesting week. Just a reminder, Monday is a market holiday. And I will not be streaming on Monday. I will be back on Tuesday. So everyone, thanks for watching. Thanks for your questions and comments. And everybody, have a great weekend, great holiday weekend. And I will see you on Tuesday. Bye.