 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. 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. Questions and comments are welcome, and I won't be watching the chat, Options-Doug chat in Discord and the chat in YouTube for your questions and comments. My agenda for today, I'm going to go over, briefly go over news items, economic data that came out this morning, and then I'll go through my positional analysis, my planning and preparation, and then I'll review a few setups from this morning, and then we'll take a look at the live market. All right, let's get started. So this morning, the only data released was the jobless claims, which typically is not much of an event, but it turned out to be somewhat of an event for the NASDAQ. Let's just take a look at that. So jobless claims at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time, let me zoom in, and the jobless claims were higher than expected, and NASDAQ traders apparently interpreted that data as bullish. So quite a reaction from the jobless claims in the NASDAQ. All right, so that was the data this morning. Again, it's been a pretty light week for economic data and news. All right, I'll go through my positional analysis now. I'm going to start with the S&B 500, and before I take a closer look at this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame. This is SPX in a 30-day one-hour chart. Let me point out the levels that I'm showing on this chart. First of all, the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the week. This is based on the options market. That's the dash purple lines. The dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper edge of the expected move for the day. And note that SPX is created right up to that level, and now appears to be finding resistance at that level. And let me point out some spot gamma levels here. So these levels are provided to spot gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms. They're shown by the red horizontal lines. The first is the put wall at 4,000. That's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. And the volatility trigger is at 4245. 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, market makers have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure, and that tends to enhance or increase volatility. Then 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, they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure, and that tends to subdue volatility. And note that level did increase pretty substantially from yesterday. Yesterday, the SPX volatility trigger was at 4195. And again, today it's at 4245. And the next level of interest is the 4300. And that is the absolute gamma strike, the strike with the largest absolute gamma, as well as the call wall. And the call wall is the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And note that SPX has been trading in this 4250 to 4300 range since last Friday. There's this range right here. And finding resistance at the 4300 level a couple of times. All right, so those are the levels, the primary daily levels. The put wall volatility trigger, absolute gamma strike, and call wall for the S&P 500 SPX. And now let's take a look at a shorter time frame to get an idea of the levels that are in play for today. And I'm showing the same levels on this chart, just a zoomed in view. Here's the volatility trigger and the lower daily expected move, the upper daily expected move, and then the call wall and absolute gamma strike. So the upper daily expected move is acting as resistance so far today. And the next level up above is obviously the 4300 call wall absolute gamma strike. All right, let's take a look at book map now. And in book map I have two columns of notes here. First the SPOT gamma cloud notes, then I have my own column of notes here. And I include everything that's included and the SPOT gamma cloud notes plus some additional information. First of all, here's the upper daily expected move for ES. And note that that acted as resistance, I think, almost to the tick. So I had 4298 as the upper daily expected move. And then I also have SPI levels here. There's the 429, the SPI 428, large gamma one level. And this has been a somewhat of a magnet for price for about an hour between 11 a.m. and noon Eastern time. Here's the SPI 427 volatility trigger. And that did act as support this morning and kind of a launching pad for continuation of the move higher up to the upper daily expected move. And then finally, the SPI 426 level. That is not a gamma level, but it did act as support. So those are the levels that are in play for the SAP 500. And we'll take a look at setups in a few minutes. I'll review the setups from this morning. All right, let's take a look at the NASDAQ now. Oh, shifts in levels. Again, I mentioned the SPX volatility trigger did shift higher by about 50 points from 4195 to 4245. And then the SPI put wall shifted lower slightly from 427 to 425. So SPI put wall again at 425 joins the absolute gamma strike at 425. Excuse me. All right, so that is the SAP 500 SPX SPI key levels. Now let's take a look at NASDAQ. And for NASDAQ, the levels are in play. Again, there's the sharp move up after the jobless claims. And then after the market opened, this is the QQQ 349 level. And that is the volatility trigger. And that did shift lower from yesterday. It was 354 yesterday, shifted down to 349. And around that level did act as support this morning. And also launching pad for the move higher. And then here's the QQQ 350 level. And that is also the lower daily, lower weekly expected move for NQ. So NQ has recovered its lower weekly expected move. And that is, again, the QQQ 350 strike, which is the absolute gamma strike that did move down lower from 355 yesterday to 350 today. That's the strike right here. And note that NQ did trade above its upper daily expected move, just the opposite of yesterday, where it traded below the lower daily expected move. And now it has dropped down below that level again. All right, so that is the NASDAQ. These levels are the QQQ 349, 350 levels, and also the upper daily expected move. And again, we'll talk about setups in a few minutes. All right, we talked about shifts in levels for QQQ, both negative with the volatility trigger dropping lower and the absolute gamma strike dropping lower. And then for NDX, several levels drop lower. The volatility trigger, call wall and absolute gamma strike all drop lower. So somewhat of a bearish shift in levels for the NASDAQ, but the, I guess kind of as to be expected, with such a sharp move down yesterday that shifts in levels are to be expected, but the dip buyers were certainly at play this morning, which is also to be expected with such a large move down and many large cap tech stocks. Traders see that as a buying opportunity. So dip buyers were in the market today. All right, so that's the NASDAQ. Just take a look also at the levels here on a QQQ chart, just to isolate QQQ price and levels. So again, here's the volatility trigger at 349 acted as support this morning and then the 350 absolute gamma strike and the call wall is still well up above at 360. All right, the next thing I want to take a look at is the Vana model. And if anybody wants to see the source of those levels, the absolute gamma levels that are a source for those levels, I'll be glad to show that otherwise we'll just move on to the Vana model. All right, so this is for SPX and we'll look at spy and QQQ also. And I think this is very important to look at it. It shows how market makers are positioned and how they can be expected to react as price and implied volatility changes. So this chart is showing market makers delta notional or delta exposure in the vertical axis and how it changes with price on the horizontal axis. There are two curves on this chart. The first, this light gray curve shows how market makers delta notional will change with changes in price only. So what this is showing as price increases, market makers delta notional will increase. And remember they want to remain delta neutral. So they will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And what the purple curve is showing, it adds implied volatility to the equation. So it's showing how market makers delta notional will change with changes in price and implied volatility. And that's the one that we want to look at. And that change in delta with the change in applied volatility is the Vana effect. So this is showing as price increases, market makers will have slightly less delta notional to hedge, not much as price increases as predicted by the delta only curve. On the other hand, as price decreases, they will have substantially more delta notional to hedge as price decreases and implied volatility increases, and they will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. Let's take a look and see where SPX is trading now. Give me just a moment and bring up a watch list. So I've got SPX at around 4280. So somewhere around here, hard to get the exact point. So this is really at the bottom of this Vana model curve. So there's not, with slight movements, there's not much of a tailwind or a headwind. But as price increases, this is showing that market makers delta notional again will increase and they'll have to sell futures. And then the same as price decreases. So much movement either way, and market makers will have to start selling futures to hedge their delta exposure for SPX. Let's take a look at SPI also. So just to note, we'll take a look at the data in just a minute, but market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX is positive. Gamma notional is positive for SPX. Let's go back and take a look at SPI. And note the shape of the curve is different for SPI. SPI gamma notional is slightly negative, or it was at the beginning of the day. And let's see where SPI is trading at around 428. So there's 428. And remember SPI moved up from 426 this morning. So there was a slight Vanna tailwind. Note the drop this morning, indicating that market makers could buy back short futures as price increased and implied volatility decreases. But that tailwind really has leveled off now and around 430, shown right here, that will become a headwind. And then on the other hand, if price drops lower and implied volatility increases, market makers will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And then finally, let's take a look at QQQ. So gamma notional for SPX is positive, was at the beginning of the day and for SPI, slightly negative. We'll take a look at those numbers in just a minute. And then for QQQ, it was even more negative. That's really due to the sharp drop yesterday where gamma notional shifted from positive to negative for QQQ. So right now QQQ is trading at around 351, right about here. So give me just a moment. Remember this morning, the volatility trigger 349 was support for QQQ. So that is shown right here, where I'm holding my cursor now. So that's 349. So remember, QQQ in a negative gamma environment as price increases, implied volatility drops, market makers can buy back short futures. And that was a tailwind for price today helping to boost that price higher. So that's why I think it's important to look at this every day to understand how market makers are expected to react and support or resist price. And in the case for QQQ, they were definitely boosting price, but now that boost has ended QQQ again trading between 351 and 352. All right, let's take a look at the data. And as I mentioned, gamma notional for SPX was positive. So here's SPX, SPI, NDX, and QQQ. So for SPX, quite positive, 824 million. Slightly negative for SPI and then negative for QQQ. All right, so that is my positional analysis for the day. And based on this, I was really, for the S&P 500, looking for more of a range day based on the large gamma notional, positive gamma notional for the S&P 500 and looking for more movement one way or another for the NASDAQ. All right, let's take a look at some setups now. I'm going to start with the S&P 500. And this is the spot gamma hero chart, hedging impact real-time options. What this chart is showing is price with the white line and that is an SPX price. And then market maker hedging flow, hedging pressure. So this is showing options trades and how market makers are reacting hedging. And this is a combined signal for SPX, SPI, XSP, and ES futures. All into one combined signal. This is typically what you want to use when you're trading the S&P 500. And I'll zoom into this chart in just a moment. I do want to take a look at the individual components. So let's start with SPX. And we'll note here this notional value is positive. 861 now, 830 million SPX. Positive, very strong correlation between options trades in SPX and price action for the S&P 500. SPI not as much, but still positive. And then ES futures have, options trades in ES futures have dropped pretty sharply in the last around 115, something like that. And then again, here's the total signal. So let's zoom in on this. And I'm going to review the setup for the morning. Obviously long and this is about from the cash open here. So this is showing there was a bit of a lag, which is a little bit unusual for options trades. Note that price starts moving higher first and options traders come in a few minutes later when you look at the total signal. Let's take a look at separate outputs and calls. And this makes it a little bit more clear. Traders were buying calls and buying puts. And the call buyers were winning, are winning. So note the positive number here for the orange line showing call buyers and the negative number for the put line, the blue line, 1.4 billion positive versus minus 826 million negative. So that gives a little bit more insight as to the reversal this morning. But again, a little bit total signal, a little bit of a lagging indicator. Let's go take a look at the... So this is the current price. All right, so that is the SAP 500. Let's take a look at book map now. Go to the ES. I'm going to zoom in on just on the morning here and remember options traders came in a little bit later. So this was not necessarily an easy read. This first reversal, kind of a double bottom at the 426 level and it really became more apparent that price was going to increase after 10 a.m. in a move above VWAP, also with this larger trader supporting the move higher with iceberg orders. Iceberg orders are what larger traders use to hide their size. And then there were, of course, secondary entries at this SPY 427 volatility trigger, multiple tests of that level, tests of that level before price moves higher. Eventually, as we saw on the entire chart, the upper daily expected move. And note that starting around 10.15, the cumulative volume delta really started to shift higher as well as buy stop orders, shown with the yellow line there, started to fuel the move higher. So the pink to dark blue line is cumulative volume delta and the yellow line is stop orders, buy stop orders, starting or helping to fuel the move higher. Also shown by these green dots here. All right, so that is the long setup this morning in the S&P 500. We'll go back to the bigger view. So the first really easier read entry for me was as this order flow shifts to clearly bullish, a lot of market buy orders coming in and then entry at above VWAP or with this multiple test of the 427 level and then also at this 4280 level that was noted as support in the SPOT Gamma AM Founders Note. All right, let me check for questions. All right, so take profit ask, hi Doug, as always thanks for sharing all your knowledge with the community. You're welcome. My question, what is your trigger to take a trade after analyzing all the data and levels? First of all, I look at the general trend of hero. That does not provide a signal or a trigger. I'm looking for, once I know, let's say hero is trending higher, I know that options traders are taking positive delta positions and market makers taking positive delta positions. Market makers are buying futures to hedge their delta exposures. So I know I have that going for me and then I'm looking for reactions at key levels, especially for the S&P 500 watching, let's go. So I'm just watching order flow at key levels. So for me, trading the S&P 500 takes a lot of patience. So I've got these levels on my chart and I sometimes get kicked when I don't do this. So it's very important, for example, to wait for price to come to you, come to your level. So this is something that I'm working on as well. But for example, right here again, I'm looking for price, looking for long set up at the 427 level. So I know that order flow is bullish and I'm just waiting for pullbacks. And so there's the pullback to this 427 level that provided multiple long entries. This last test, really the third kind of major test was the one that took price higher. Let me just point out one other thing on this chart and let's, I'm going to zoom in. Let's say from about 11.15 to 1 o'clock. What I want to point out is this, let me darken this up just a little bit. This is something that Bruce looks at. So Bruce is the director of education at Bookmap. He is an order flow expert. He watches ES every day. He does a webinar at 10 a.m. eastern time on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday watching the ES live. This is the kind of thing that he looks at. So notice the liquidity here at this 429 level that acted as resistance. If we draw a line from that level over here, so this level acted as resistance. Price broke above. So this is the kind of thing that he looks at and it provided a great entry right here. So it acted as resistance. Price came back and checked that level and note there was a little bit of liquidity that came in and again a good entry for a long right there at that 429 level. So there's another pullback to a known level, not a spy level but a liquidity level and where traders reacted before. All right, so that is the S&P 500 set up this morning. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. I'm going to go to the hero for NASDAQ. So just like the S&P 500, this is a combined signal for NDX and QQQ. Very strong correlation between options, trades, hedging flow and price action in the NASDAQ. Let's zoom in on this. And for NASDAQ, I'm going to zoom in a little bit more and it took a while, just like the SPX, took a little while for the confirmation in the options trades hero signal for NASDAQ, just around 9.55, 10 a.m. Price moves higher, options trades get on board, option traders get on board. Let's separate outputs and calls. So it took a while for call buyers to join the party as well. All right, let's go take a look at book map. I'm going to zoom in. All right, so pretty similar to book map. I'm looking at order flow here and reactions at levels. So just at the open, I know 349, QQQ349 is key level that acted as support. And then also for NQ, the large round numbers. This is 350, 14, 350, acted as support. I'm watching these shifts in order flow. Note the pink dots, aggressive sellers on the way down, and then aggressive buyers come in, shown by the green volume dots. I can see that larger traders are buying with iceberg orders, cumulative volume delta rising, and buy-stop orders helping to fuel the move higher. And also, I'm watching tech stocks as well, and I could see that there were dip buyers coming in, and we'll take a look at that in just a minute. So there's the setup in NASDAQ this morning. Really confirm more by order flow and options trades somewhat secondary, but the levels, the QQQ levels were key, just like the spy levels were key for ES. All right, let's take a look at a couple stocks, and then we'll go take a look at the live market. So the first stock that I want to take a look at is Amazon. And I'm just picking a few examples this morning from this morning. So there's Amazon. And note that 125 is the call wall, and that was the target for this move up this morning. 125, the call wall. Let's take a look at Hero. See what options traders were doing. So here's Amazon, and it took a while for options traders to get going in Amazon as well. This confirmed the move higher to the 125 call wall, and that's also the key gamma strike. The next is Meta, and that was really the best setup of the day. Very strong price action, strong correlation with options trades, and hedging activity and price action. Zoom in on the morning. So note the 260 level, key gamma strike, and then the put wall at 262. Let's just separate outputs and calls and see what traders were doing. So they're buying calls, and that is really driving price action higher. That's shown by the rising orange line. Note the notional value here, positive 35 million versus minus 1 million. So they are buying calls and buying puts. They were this morning, but call buyers are winning. Let's go take a look at book map. So remember 260 was the key gamma strike, 262 the put wall. So price was trading below the put wall at the open, now trading higher. So great long setup in Meta, helping to drive the NASDAQ higher. Let me just check and see where the call wall is for Meta. So for Meta the call wall is at 275, back to book map. So Meta has some room to run, the call wall at 275. And the last one was NVIDIA. Really sharp move higher this morning for the first two and a half hours. Let's take a look at HERO. So here's HERO, and we'll see that call buyers are driving price higher. Very steady uptrend of call buyers until about 1230. Then they stop buying calls and price starts to move a little bit lower. So there's hardly any activity in puts. Calls almost 247 million versus puts minus 4 million. So a call buyer is definitely driving price higher. In a stock when traders buy calls, market makers sell the calls and they have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure. And that can really help to drive a price higher. So if you're looking for a setup in a stock, this is definitely what you want to look for, is steady call buying, driving that price higher and higher. As market makers have to continue to buy stock. All right, so those are the stocks that I wanted to highlight. If anybody else, if anybody has any other stocks that you want me to take a look at, let me know. Otherwise we'll go to the live market. So we'll see what options traders are doing now. I'm going to go to a, notice how, so we've zoomed in for the last couple of hours here and we're on a one day look back period. So this is a cumulative value for the entire day. Let's just see if there's any additional insight from looking at a shorter rolling window period and there definitely is. So here we can actually see a little bit of a lead effect in hero. Hero moving up around 140 and price starts to move higher about 10 minutes later and now continues higher. Let's go take a look at book map. Yes. And note that hero started to move higher about 140 and SAP 500 reverses higher just a few minutes later at this 4280 level. So there's your entry point. Options traders taking positive delta positions. Market makers start buying futures and price reverses at a key level that you expect to act as support. That's this 4280 level. And then also note the multiple test of the spy 428 level and now price is moving higher back up toward 429 and the upper daily expected move. So if you were patiently waiting for a long setup, here's your first entry point at the 4280 level SPX 4280 in another entry point at 428 spy 428. So take profit. This is what I'm looking for pullbacks to these key levels with some sort of indication of price moving higher order flow and or hedging flow. Right. So nothing to do here in the SAP 500. We obviously were late for these entries. Let's go take a look at NASDAQ now. So NASDAQ moving higher as well again above the upper daily expected move above the QQQ 352 level and the NQ 450 level. Let's see what options traders are doing and again providing a good indication of the move higher. And this is the 30 minute rolling window period. So we're only looking at the last 30 minutes of data and the last entry point was about 211. Let's go take a look at book map. So right about here looks like low point of 36.25. Notice price gets going. Cumulative volume delta increases. Cumulative volume delta increases. And buy stop orders shown with the rising yellow line help the field to move higher. Let's see where price could be going. Let's see what options traders are doing. Looks like a potential pullback. And I usually mention this but I have multiple screens. I'm only presenting on once so I have to jump back and forth between this hero chart and book map. When I'm actually trading I'm looking at both on different screens at the same time. So I don't have to jump back and forth like I'm doing in this presentation. The overall trend of hero is higher. It looks like it is ticking higher now. So the way I think the way Bruce looks at things is this was somewhat of a level of interest there. Acted as resistance and now a support. We know that hedging flow is moving higher again. Water flow continues higher. Note the shift in volume dots. Pink to green. Maybe coming back to retest that level. Maybe breaking lower now. Let's see what options traders are doing. Leveling off a bit. And we may need to need a deeper pullback. If we looking for a long maybe to the 352 level. And prices trading above the upper daily expected move. Just from a probability point of view you would look for price to move lower. Let's take a look at the S&P 500. Larger traders are selling with iceberg orders but cumulative volume delta and stop orders. And order flow all look bullish to me. And again the last good entry was at 428. Let's go take a look at hero for the S&P 500. Overall twin trend somewhat negative now. Again we're on a 30 minute rolling window period. So for NASDAQ it just took a little bit deeper pullback. Alright before I wrap it up. Does anybody have anything that they want me to take a look at? Go back to the ES. Stick with the NASDAQ. Take a look at a stock. I've got just a couple of minutes left. And uncle asked do you have a hero for any of the Chinese tech names. Yeah we'll check. I don't follow any of those. Let's go to Tesla. Take a quick look at Tesla. Overall very bullish day. Bullish order flow. Alright let's go take a look at hero. I'm going to go back to the one day look back period. So first of all let's go to Tesla. So there's Tesla. Traders buying calls and selling puts. But definitely call buyers more aggressive. Alright there was a request for Chinese tech stocks. Let's see what is in the overall list of stocks. So I'm looking at my watch list here. And let's go to the entire list of stocks. So here's Baba. So there you go. Uncle there's Baba. Traders were buying calls in the morning helping to drive price higher. And the last GameStop. Here it is. So I believe GameStop reported earnings yesterday or had some announcement. And options trades hedging flow were definitely bearish in the morning. So in the morning traders were buying puts and selling calls. And then when they started buying calls price turned around. This rising orange line and price started to move higher. So there's GameStop. Alright the S&P 500 continues higher. Oh Abu says GameStop new CEO. That's right. So I guess the old CEO is out immediately in the new CEO for GameStop. And Google plus Allen 13 you're welcome. And thanks for the update Abu. Let's just wrap it up here. So today really appears to be driven by debt buyers in large cap tech stocks. And that is shown here in this heat map for the S&P 500. Yesterday they were weak and the Russell 2000 was strong. And just the opposite today. So debt buyers come in large cap tech stocks. The usual suspects magnificent 7 driving price higher today. And good reads in order flow and hedging flow today for the NASDAQ S&P 500. Oh there's no new CEO yet. Ryan is the executive chairman. Okay thank you. Yeah I just don't follow GameStop. I mainly follow the NASDAQ S&P 500 and large cap tech stocks. So thanks for the update. Hope that helped. I want to thank everyone for watching. Thanks for your questions and comments. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye.