 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the disclosures. General disclosure, all Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific, investment advice, nor recommendations. Risk disclosure, trading futures, equities, and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. 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 channel which I'll go over in just a minute. And then I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter. My name there is at Doug Plus. The focus of my presentation today and the focus of the Options-Doug 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. And that is going to be a key for today. 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 on Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow on Spot and 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 setups can be taken with futures, shares of stock, or options. Questions and comments are welcome. And I will be watching both the Options-Doug Chat channel and Discord, as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. And hello, Joel. Glad you're here. Joel says NQ and ES on fire today. Yeah, we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about what I think is driving the market today in just a couple of minutes. All right, again, questions and comments are welcome. And I'll be watching both the chat and YouTube and the chat in Options-Doug Bookmap Discord for your questions and comments. So my agenda for today, what I want to cover, go over news items for today to wrap up the week. Then I'll go through my positional analysis. Then I'll review some setups from this morning. And then I'll talk about the live market. And when I get to the live market, if anyone's had any stocks they want me to take a look at, please let me know. And I'll be glad to do that. All right, so first of all, news items for today. Of course, the big news item was the employment report that came out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. Let's just take a look at that. Here it is in ES Futures and Bookmap. Very sharp drop. The employment report came out much better than expected. I think it was the economy added 336 jobs in September and the market was looking for 170,000. So much better than expected. Initially interpreted as bearish. Again shown by the sharp drop at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And note the drop in the S&P 500 went down to the, really can't see it on this chart, but it is this upper line here that is the SPI 420 put wall. And then price has moved higher ever since then. All right, so we'll talk more about that in a few minutes. So that was the news for today. Next week, just a preview, CPI, PPI, CPI both come out and I believe FOMC will be out in a few minutes as well. All right, so this is the S&P 500. And before I take a closer look at this chart, I do want to take a look at a larger time frame. So going on to my positional analysis now. This is the S&P 500 SPX index showing in a 30 day one hour chart and think or swim. This is number 15th, call dominated options expiration. The downtrend began then. And it looks like it may have found support right around the 4200 level, SPX 4200 level. That is the current put wall. All right, let me point out some levels on this chart. First of all, the dash purple lines. Oh, it looks like OBS studio. All right, give me just a moment. All right, can someone in YouTube confirm that you can hear me and see my presentation? Again, can someone in YouTube confirm you can hear me and see my presentation? All right, James says yes, Joel says yes. All right, thank you. Thank you very much. All right, so I use OBS studio to stream to YouTube and it looks like it cut out for just a minute. So back, excuse me, back to presentation. The dash purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. That's based on the options market. And this is showing for the week, SPX should trade within that range 68% of the time, one standard deviation. All right, then just below that, there's the lower daily expected move with the dash blue line. And there's the upper daily expected move again with a dash blue line. Looks like SPX is trading above the upper daily expected move. And the lower weekly expected move was in play for today. All right, let me point out some spot gamma levels on this chart. These are proprietary spot gamma levels based on open way to gamma weighted open interest. These are available to spot gamma subscribers. I'm going to point out the key daily levels. First of all, here's the put wall at 4200. That's a strike with large net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. Then the next level up is 4300. That's right around the upper daily expected move. That is the absolute gamma strike. That's a strike with the largest absolute positive and negative gamma. All right, so again, here's the put wall 4300 level. That's the absolute gamma strike. That's also the volatility trigger. That is spot gammas 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 hitch their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. And that was key for today. And then above that level, like SPX is trading right now, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. In a positive gamma environment, market makers have to trade against price to hitch their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue or decrease volatility. So 4300 is the absolute gamma strike as well as the volatility trigger. And then up above is the call wall at 4450. That's a strike with a large net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance. So a floor at 4200 was in play for today and gamma mostly concentrated, the most gamma concentrated at the 4300 level. And then the call wall at 4450, the potential ceiling. Not in play for today, but maybe in the coming week or so if this rally continues higher. All right, so those are the spot gamma levels for SPX. There were no shifts and levels. No shifts and levels from yesterday to today. All right, let's take a look at a shorter time frame. Again, just isolating SPX in a one day, one minute chart, key levels, the lower daily expected move just below the lower weekly expected move that did act as support almost to the tick. Looks like less than a less than a point off. Then here's the upper daily expected move. Also the 4300 level that initially acted as somewhat as resistance. And now price is trading above that level. Remember above the volatility trigger, this market makers position on the gamma curve shifts. So a lot of the put Vana fuel that I'll talk about in just a minute may be maybe gone. It may have been burned up. So we'll talk about more about that in a minute. All right, so those are the levels in play SPX levels in play for today. Now let's go back to the SAP 500. I'm going to stick with this larger time frame view here. So again, the key levels, there's the 420 spy 420 football. So I have my own cloud notes here. And I have SPX levels, a number of levels here. So there's SPX. There's the 4300 level absolute gamma strike volatility trigger. Note there is a difference in price between ES and SPX. And today it is somewhere between 33 and 34. So this morning it was closer to 33. So that's what I'm using today, 33. So I'm showing the SPX 4300 level at ES 4333. Also here are the spy levels. There's the spy 425 absolute gamma strike spy 426 volatility trigger. So the SAP 500 is now trading above the spy volatility trigger as well as the SPX volatility trigger. And if that continues, the price remains here. I expect a significant shift in gamma notional for Monday. And let me just show you. So the key level, the key support level was the spy 420 football. And now it looks like there was quite a bit of consolidation around the SPX 4300 level. Let's just take a look at spy here so I can confirm that 420 level acting as support. So here you can see the, you know, just confirming that label was not clear on the ES chart, but there's the 420 level. That's the put wall for spy acting as support. Let's go back to ES. All right. So that was the key, the spy 420 put wall, consolidation of 4300. And then we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes. So those are the key levels for the SAP 500 today. Let's go to NASDAQ, same sharp drop lower after the employment report support at the QQQ 354 level. And now price trading much higher, much above the, let's take a look at a, before I dig into this chart too much, let's just isolate QQQ. So this QQQ and a one day one minute chart. This is showing after the data support at the 355 level. And also there's a combo level there. Oops, that is the 354 level, 354 and a combo level just above that. And then here's the 355 level, another combo level that combines QQQ and NDX, gamma weighted open interest into one level converted to an equivalent QQQ price. So before the cash open, this 354 level acted as support. And then this 355 as well as the combo level acted as support for launch hire. This is the 360 volatility trigger. And also the absolute gamma strike. And then the call wall at 362. So QQQ has blasted above the 362 call wall, quite a bit, quite a move higher today. All right, let's take a look at an NDX chart and we'll see that combo level and play NDX. So here's that combo level. Again, combining NDX, QQQ, gamma weighted open interest into one level. And in this case, converted to an equivalent NDX price. Double bottom at that level. And again, almost to the tick. And now NASDAQ continues higher. Let's go back to the NQ chart. I know there are a lot of levels on this chart. Because big move, really from 1400 to right now 15,100. So 400 point move higher, or even more from the low. So again, here's the support at the 354 level before the cash open. Then that double bottom at the 355 combo level. And NASDAQ continues higher. So again, we'll talk about a setups in a few minutes. So those levels and play for today. All right, let's take a look at gamma notional. This is market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. For I'm going to look at SPX, SPY, and QQQ. Now, these numbers are all negative. And these are not extremes, but still very negative. This is market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. And this means that traders are long puts at the beginning of the day. Market makers are short puts. And in this portion of the gamma curve, they have to sell futures in the direction of price to hedge their delta exposure. And we can see this on the Vana model. This is for SPX. What this chart is showing is market makers delta notional on the vertical axis price on the horizontal axis. There are two curves on this chart. The light gray curve shows how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only. And then the purple curve adds implied volatility to the equation. And this is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility. And this change in delta with the change in implied volatility is the Vana effect. Vana is a second order Greek. All right, let's take a look at some prices now. So let me check. All right, so first of all, the low of the day for SPX was about 42.19. So somewhere around here. So what this chart is showing as price increases, so prices increasing, implied volatility is dropping. Market makers can buy back short hedges. And that is a put Vana rally. And that is a powerful force that can drive price much higher. And this is what is going on today. And there's also the charm effect. Charm is the change in delta as time passes. So as you can imagine, traders were long puts that expire today as protection for the jobs report. And those puts as price rises are quickly losing value, they may be selling those puts. But again, those puts are losing value due to an approaching expiration. So market makers can buy back short futures due to this change in price, change in implied volatility, and as time passes, all that is leading to is the puts that traders were long or losing value, market makers were should the puts. So those puts are losing value, their delta notional is decreasing and they can buy back short futures. So again, this is a put Vana rally. All right, so that is SPX. Let's see where it's trading now. Right around 43. So somewhere close to the bottom of this curve. So this put Vana fuel is at least for today, according to this chart, has been a good bit of it has been burned up. This curve is starting starting to flatten out. All right, let's take a look at spy. So for spy, the low of the day was right around 420 that 420 put wall. Remember that was before the cash open. So right around here. And now spy is trading right around 429 also near the bottom of the curve. A lot of that put Vana fuel has been been used. Finally, let's take a look at QQQ. Remember for QQQ, the low of the day was 354 right around here. Right now QQQ is trading around 364, 10 points higher. So right around here also at the bottom of the curve. So this is why I look at this every day. This this is an indication of how market makers may react with changes in price and implied volatility, especially after a major economic event. And this occurred quite often last year at CPI reports. Remember last year the market was mostly in a negative gamma position, persistent negative gamma position. And as often with the CPI reports that came in not as bad as expected or as expected, there were large rallies like bear market rallies after the CPI report due to this put Vana effect. Let's go back to SBX. All right, so Truman asked how much SBX gamma was expiring today. All right, so this is today. This is the expiration today. This is not significant. Orange bar showing, it's very small, but orange bar showing called gamma, blue bar showing put gamma. So this is the October 20th. This is the monthly expiration, much larger. And then this is the December expiration. All right, so there were some some gamma expiring today, but not not significant. So the main driver of the rally today was the put Vana rally. All right, let's take a look at some setups. I'm going to start by looking at the S&P 500. This is the hero signal, hedging impact, real time options, H-I-R-O. This is available to spot gamma subscribers. This chart is showing price for SPX with a white line. The purple line is showing the hero signal. And this is showing options, trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal of SPX by XSP and ES futures. This is all into one combined signal. So if you trade any form of the S&P 500, this is what you want to take a look at. All right, let's zoom in on this chart and we'll take a look at the setup from this morning. Right now, I'm looking at a look back period, the rolling window taking into account the entire day of data. And I'm going to start by rolling this back to 30 minutes. Then I'm going to zoom in on the morning. It makes this a little bit more clear what was going on. So initially traders were taking negative delta positions oops, shown by the falling purple line. Then that leveled off. And then just before 10 AM, they started taking positive delta positions. And then price responded a few minutes later at 10 10, then just after 10 20. And this setup, notice how then after this initial kickoff, hero levels off, but price continues higher. Let's zoom out a bit. So you can see that more clearly. Here's the, here's the kickoff. And this is a setup that I call hero kickoff. So initially options traders initiate the move higher, then they leave the field. And then we'll take a look at book map just a minute to see who came on the field. So right around 11, they start getting on board again. All right, so we know there's this hero kickoff just before 10 AM. Let's go take a look at book map. Let's go back to the SMB 500. I'm going to zoom in just on the morning session here. I'm going to tone down the heat map quite a bit just to clarify the order flow here. So remember, here's the support at the 420 spy 420 level, then options traders right around 10 AM started taking positive delta positions, maybe just a little bit before. And during that time, all the lines in the sub chart, the order flow was shifting bullish. Notice large traders buying with iceberg orders. They used to hide their size. You can see all the iceberg buys here. That's 2,216 contracts. And to this zoomed out view, it's consolidated. There are actually 29 executions here. So large traders just steadily buying with iceberg orders. Also buy stop orders shown by the rising yellow line are helping to fuel the move higher. And large traders continue to buy with iceberg orders. And then cumulative volume delta shown by the dark blue line there kicks up pretty sharply. And just around 1020, the SMB 500 breaks this trend line here. Does a final test of 421 and then breaks out and moves much higher as other traders took the field. Larger traders with iceberg orders, buy stop orders and aggressive buyers shown with cumulative volume delta all rising. Very bullish setup. And let's take a look at one other thing to help confirm this Put Vanna rally. Let's go take a look at VIX. So this is VIX for today. And note VIX broke this slight uptrend. And that's right around 1020. VIX broke lower right around 1020. So implied volatility started dropping. Large traders buying with iceberg orders, options traders taking positive delta positions, buy stop orders fueling the move higher, and aggressive buyers helping to move price higher. All very bullish, helping to fuel this rally higher. All right, so it took a little while, little patience for the setup. But the entry point was somewhere between 1015 and 1030, depending on how you read this. And the best looking at somewhat after 1020 watching VIX, seeing that sharp drop right around 1020 breaking that uptrend line. All right, so that was the setup in the SB500. And it has slowed down, but continues higher. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ. Very similar setup. And remember, we saw the double bottom here at 355, also that combo level. So that was clear in the QQQ and NDX charts. Let's go take a look and see what options traders were doing. I'm going to go back to hero. And again, right now I'm in a 30 minute look back period. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. So this is a combined signal for NDX and QQQ. And here's that kickoff. Again, right around 10am. Traders aggressively taking positive delta positions. Price moves higher. Options traders for a while leave the field. But price continues higher as other players take the field after the kickoff team leaves the field. So the other players are large traders with iceberg orders as well as buy stop orders. So buy stop orders and aggressive and long large traders again helping to fuel the move higher after the initiation from the options traders. So that is the hero kickoff setup in both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. All right, so NASDAQ slowing down but continues higher. And note that NQ traded, just a little bit, traded from the lower daily expected move all the way now above the upper daily expected move. And I had the expected move today for NQ at plus or minus 172 points. So that is from the lower daily expected move to the upper daily expected move 344 points. All right, so quite a move in NASDAQ today. Let's take a look at some stocks and then we'll take a look at the live market. So I've got three stocks I want to take a look at. If anybody else has stocks they want to take a look at, I'll be glad to do that. All right, the first is AMD and note AMD 102 is the hedge wall. Also the, so that's the hedge wall 105 the call wall. So AMD blasted above its call wall. Let's see what options traders were doing. Let's go back to hero. I'm going to shift back to a one day look back period and we'll take a look at AMD and then we'll get back and take a look at S&P 500 and NASDAQ again. We can see for obviously for NASDAQ that options traders were fading this move taking negative delta positions. So here's AMD. This is much more clear. Here's the 102 hedge wall and the 105 call wall key gamma strike that did not do its job. Let's see what traders are doing. So it's primarily call buyers driving price higher. That's shown by the rising orange line. They're also selling puts that show them by the rising blue line and the positive notional value. Call buyers more aggressive, driving price higher. All right. Sorry about that. I have reported this issue to spot gamma. Last I heard they were not able to recreate it. So I'm not sure what is causing that problem. Anyway, the options traders now it looks like right around noon or so have taken their foot off the gas and price is now consolidating. So let's go back to book, ma'am. So price consolidating around the 107 level. So the options traders again have taken their foot off the gas and it looks like now aggressive buyers have come in coming in. Notice the shift from magenta volume dots showing those are buy minus sell. So they're more sellers than buyers. Options traders clearly driving the move higher. And then right around 11, between 11, 11, 30 aggressive buyers start to come in. That's shown by the green volume dots there. All right. That's AMD. Let's take a look at Amazon now. Here's Amazon. Now they're a lot more green volume dots here. A lot more aggressive buyers. Let's take a look and see what options traders are doing. Let's go back to hero. Take a look at Amazon. And this was a nice divergent setup. So options traders taking positive delta positions really don't take a pause until about 11, 30 price drops down. Good entry point here as options traders continue to take positive delta positions. Note the flow alert there. Very timely alert. All right. Let's see what options traders are doing. They're buying calls and net for the day. They're still selling puts earlier. They looks like about 11, 30. They stopped selling calls, started buying calls, but still net for the day. That number is positive. All right. Let's try again. All right. So call buyers really driving price higher today, much more aggressive than put sellers. And they continue to buy calls, driving price higher. Let's go back to book map. So we know those entry point was right around 10, 20. Let's go back to book map, Amazon. So here's the entry point, this trend break, final test of VWAP, aggressive buyers. We know that options traders are taking positive delta positions and price moves higher, continues to move higher. All right. The next one I want to take a look at is Meta. All right. Meta 310 is the call wall. Price paused at that level, but now it's moving higher, continues to move higher. Let's see what options traders are doing. Let's go to Meta. Very similar to Amazon, options traders really continually accumulating positive delta positions. Price moves down briefly. This, in this case, right around 10, 10 moves higher. Note the timely flow alert there. All right. Let's go see what options traders are doing. So call buyers really in charge today. That's both numbers positive, but 270 million for the orange line for calls versus 3.5, 3.4 million positive for the blue line. So when traders buy calls, market makers sell the calls and they have to buy stock. They have to buy Meta stock to hedge their delta exposure. All right. Let's go back to book map. So traders continue to buy calls and Meta continues to move higher. All right. So those are the three stocks that I wanted to show. Now let's go back and take a look at the indices. Then we'll see if we can find any setups for the afternoon. So the S&P 500, after about 12, the really strong rally has stopped as the S&P 500, S&P X has reached and Smy have reached toward the bottom of this Vana model indicating a good bit of the put Vana fuel has burned up. Also notice the leveling off in the sub charts here. Iceberg orders slowing down. Really looks like the iceberg sell orders being matched by the iceberg buy orders. Also the stop orders have flattened off and the cumulative volume delta net since 12 has been sloping slightly down. So a lot of the drivers of price have slowed down. All right. Let's take a look at Nasdaq and there's just really too many lines here to make much sense of this. So let's zoom way in here. So consolidating somewhere between the 364 QQQ 364 and the NQ 15100. Trying to move higher. Let's see what options traders are doing. So first of all, let's go to the S&P 500 and I am in a one day look back period looking at all trades. We can take a look at next expiry. So it looks like really long term options trades. Traders are more aggressive. Zero DTE shown by the green line. All expiration shown by the purple line. Let's take a look at puts and calls. So today traders are buying calls and buying puts. That's very typical for an index. Call buyers, put buyers, more aggressive. But so far other players are in charge helping to drive price higher. All right. Let's go to Nasdaq. Back to the total signal and I have to move pretty quickly here to avoid that error. All right. So options traders taking negative delta positions in Nasdaq. So it's about 1030 net for the day. This number is negative. 1.85 billion negative. So let's see what options traders doing. So net for the day they are buying puts and selling calls. So spot gamma has indicated what both of these lines are moving in the same direction. So they're selling calls buying puts or buying calls selling puts. One or the other. That is a very powerful signal that can help to drive price. Sorry about that. There's nothing I can do about it. So let's go to the total signal. I'm going to take a look at the zero DTE traders. All right. So it looks like for the Nasdaq the zero DTE traders are making up a large portion of the options trades today that's shown by the green line showing the very strong correspondence with the purple line green line being the next expiration which is today and the purple line being the all expirations. So very interesting for Nasdaq. This is very bearish indicating options traders are taking negative delta positions especially zero DTE. They are selling calls and buying puts. Let's go take a look at Nasdaq. So Nasdaq so far does not show any sign of moving lower. Let me just take a look at something. All right. So I'm looking at an eight like a double quad chart of all of the magnificent seven plus AMD looks like all are kind of leveling off consolidating. Here's the chart I'm looking at. So always remember these index products are an index of stocks. Let's jump over to the S&P 500. Also the S&P 500 continues to grind higher. There's this the 430 spy 430 level notice resistance in the spot gamma AM founders note. And let's go to heroes see what options traders are doing the S&P 500. So the S&P 500 they started taking negative delta positions right around noon. Now that activity is leveled off. Let's see if we can get any more clarity by changing the rolling window period to 30 minutes. So still this is leveled off. So a little bit different than the Nasdaq for the S&P 500. So looking at this 30 minute rolling window period indicates that the zero DTE traders are driving a large part of the afternoon options trades. Let's go back to book map. All right. So Nasdaq continues to grind higher. Looks like aggressive buyers coming in shown by the green volume dots. Let's take a look at some stocks. I'm just going to do a quick scan through here and Apple slowing down but grinding higher AMD. It looks like options traders may be definitely have taken the foot off the gas. Let me just take a look at something here AMD. I'm just looking at an options chain on another screen to see if there's any any potential value in buying a put. Let's go to AMD buying a put or a put spread. I don't don't really see anything. So AMD consolidating at 107 aggressive buyers still in there. Let's go back to Hero. All right. Google continues to grind higher. Same with Meta. Microsoft is large block order here kind of obscuring the the hero signal. So notice Microsoft is trading above the call wall. Options traders are taking negative delta positions as price has reached that level. So that could be a potential late afternoon short. Let's go take a look at Bookmap. Go to Microsoft. Microsoft trading still grinding higher trading much higher than the let's go back to Hero. Call walls at 325 and Microsoft trading trading a good bit higher that at 327.50. So when I zoom out I can see that Microsoft is trading higher. Options traders continue to take positive delta positions. So no short there. Take a look at Nvidia. Notice Nvidia traded well above its call wall at 450 traded up to 455. Now options traders at 455 have taken their foot off the gas and price just consolidating. Let's take a look at Tesla. So Tesla options traders started starting to take negative delta positions right around 12 12 noon. Let's see what they're doing. All right. So they started buying calls again shown by the rising orange line list. Let's take a look at a 30 minute rolling window period. So they started buying calls again in Tesla. Tesla is at the just above the 260 key gamma strike and that's right at the last closing as well. Let's take a look at Bookmap. All right. So a very bullish day that shows those signs of letting up. Traders continue to buy buy buy. All right S&P moving higher. NASDAQ continues to move higher. All right everyone my time is up. I want to thank you for watching. Everyone have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday. Thanks again. Bye.