 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 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. 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 a directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in Spont 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. 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 in Discord as well as the chat in YouTube for your questions and comments. So please feel free to post. And Victor Ben, glad what I'm doing is helpful. That's great. That makes me very happy to hear that. Keep up the good work. And Karm FX, hello to you. Welcome. Glad you're here. All right. My agenda for today, what I want to cover is news items for today, the rest of the week, economic data events, earnings. Then I'll go through my positional analysis. Then I want to review some setups from this morning. And then we can then I'll talk about the live market. And when I get to the live market, if anyone has had any stocks, they want me to take a look at, please let me know. All right. So first of all, economic data. Apparently, there was another downgrade today. Sometime, I don't know if it was overnight or this morning, Moody's downgraded the credit rating of 10 banks. And that might have been somewhat of a reason for the move down this morning. All right. So that is today. And then for the rest of the week, the key high impact data. First of all, CPI data comes out on Thursday at 830 a.m. Eastern time. And then PPI data comes out at 830 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. And then on Friday, Michigan consumer sentiment is out at 10 a.m. All right. So those are the news items. Now let's let me get started with positional analysis. I'm going to go start with the SAP 500. This is the ES futures in book map. And before I take a closer look at this chart, I want to take a look at a larger time frame. This is SBX, a 30 day one hour chart showing key levels and also the the trend of price again over the last 30 days. Let me zoom in on this chart so we can see the current price a little bit more clearly. So this is showing the kind of the break of the uptrend last Wednesday. That was the Fitch downgrade of US debt. And the downtrend continues after that downgrade. Let me point out the levels on this chart. First of all, the dash purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. And SBX is trading still within that range above the lower and below the upper weekly expected move. The dash blue lines, not the same case here. Dash blue lines show the daily expected move. Both of these are based on just come from the options market. And note that SBX is trading below the lower daily expected move. Again, shown with the dash blue lines. And there are also some key spot gamma levels on this chart shown with the dark red horizontal lines. And the first is the 4500 level. That's right here. And that is the poop wall that is spot gammas support level. The poop wall is a strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. That's a key level. That is also the absolute gamma strike. And that is the strike with the largest absolute gamma positive and negative. So 45, a very key pivotal level for the SBX and SBX is trading below that level now. Then the next level up is the volatility trigger at 4520. And 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 hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. And I'll show you a graphical representation of that in a few minutes with the Vana model. So right now SBX is trading below its volatility trigger in a negative gamma environment. And then on the other hand, above that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. And in a positive gamma environment, market makers have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue volatility. And then finally the call wall is at 4600. That's the strike of the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. So the key points here are the SBX is trading below its lower daily expected move is trading below its put wall and below the volatility trigger. And note, there were a few shifts in levels for the SBX and spy, both the volatility trigger triggers and put wall shifted higher. All right, let's take a look at another another SBX chart. Just to get a closer look at the levels that are in play for today. This is SBX in a one day, one minute chart. Let's just zoom in on this. So you can see here that SBX is trading below the volatility trigger in negative gamma environment. Also below the put wall, the key 4500 pivot level, and also the lower daily expected move. And one other thing that I should point out on the larger timeframe here, note the large gap in gamma levels from actually this 4500 combo L five level all the way down to 4400. Very large gap in gamma levels. And what that might mean is that I think that opens up the potential for a fast move down to 4500 before the next level of support. And know that is that slightly below the lower weekly expected move. All right, let's go back to book map. Now in a book map, I have my cloud notes here. And I'm showing the SBX levels as well as spy levels. So here's the spy 447 put wall. And now the SB 500 is trading above that level. Trade a blow it earlier today. Note the zoom just a little bit here and note the spy 448 level. That's a combo three level. Combining SBX and spy gamma into one level. That level did act as resistance earlier today. And then price moved down to just above the spy 445 level. That's a large gamma four level. Alright, so those levels in play again. Here's the spy 447 put wall. And if I zoom a little bit, so right here, this is the spy 451 volatility trigger. And I have their two lines there, the SBX volatility trigger is just about at that same level. Alright, so those are the levels in play today for the SB 500, both SBX and spy levels. And we'll talk about setups in a few minutes. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ. So again, remember shifts for levels for the SB 500 volatility triggers and put walls shifted higher for the SB 500 SBX and spy. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. This is in Q futures. I'm going to take a look at a QQQ chart first, just so we can take a look at the the key levels and note that the 373 level. That's not a gamma level did act as resistance earlier today before the cash open. Here's the put wall at 370. And now QQQ is trading above that level after apparently finding support at the 369 level. Again, not a not a spot gamma level, but a round number QQQ round number. Alright, so those are the QQQ levels in play for today. And I'm showing those on my chart as well. And note, this is the right here. I have two white lines. This is the label for the NDX 15,192 combo to level just below the 370 put wall. Note that in Q is trading below its lower daily expected move. And again, there's the 373 resistance and the 369 support. And again, we'll talk about setups in a few minutes. So there were really no shifts in levels for the NASDAQ NDX. Volatility trigger did shift lower by 10 points, which is not not significant. Alright, so those levels in play today for the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. And for NASDAQ, mainly QQQ round numbers in play. Alright, let's take a look at gamma notional now. We'll take a look at gamma notional, see how market makers were positioned in the options market at the beginning of the day. So I'm looking at gamma notional for SPX, SPY, NDX and QQQ. And what this is showing is that market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day was negative for SPX, SPY and QQQ. And I generally don't pay any attention to NDX. So these numbers did shift higher. They are less negative than yesterday, but all still negative. So at the beginning of the day, market makers position on the gamma curve was negative. This indicates that in this portion of the gamma curve, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. So if price drops, they need to, and implied volatility increases, they need to sell futures. And then on the other hand, if price increases, they can buy back their short futures. So again, all these numbers negative, but less negative than yesterday. All right, let's take a look at the Vana model. Now, we can see an illustration of this. Let me take a look at, go back to one thing here. We'll start with SPX. So we see the lower the day for SPX was around 44.64. All right, so I'm going to open up the Vana model and note the gamma notional for SPX was mildly negative. So this is, this Vana model curve is typical of a, you know, I guess a slightly negative to neutral negative gamma. So what this chart is showing, gamma position, I'm sorry. So what this chart is showing is delta notional, market makers delta notional and the vertical axis price for SPX on the horizontal axis, there are two curves on this chart. The light gray curve is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only. And then the purple curve adds implied volatility to the equation. It is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and implied volatility. And that change in delta with a change in implied volatility is the Vana effect. That's a second order Greek. So what the chart is showing is if price decreases, market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. Their delta exposure increases, they want to remain delta neutral. So they have to sell futures. And then on the other hand, if price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short futures. Alright, let's take a look at, first of all, SPX traded down right around 44.64. There's 44.65. So in the low of the day, market makers position on the gamma curve was firmly in this negative region, this left skew where they are, they are selling futures as price decreases and buy back short futures as price increases. Alright, SPX right now is trading around 44.80. Alright, so still firmly in the negative portion of this Vana curve. So again, in a negative gamma environment, on this portion of the Vana model, we're expecting larger moves enhanced by market makers trading with price. Alright, so that is SPX. We'll take a quick look at SPI. So right now SPI is trading right around 44.47. So trading above the low of the day, but still firmly in the negative portion of the negative gamma portion of the Vana model here. So again, expecting larger moves market makers trading with price. Then finally QQQ, this curve of Vana model again very characteristic of a negative gamma environment. A sharp skew to the left, QQQ trading right around 370, 370.50 just above the put wall, but well below the volatility trigger at 376, 376 volatility trigger. So firmly in the negative gamma portion of the of this Vana model here. One thing to point out is the news that I mentioned, news items coming out later on in the week. CPI data and PPI data. So if this negative gamma position persists into Thursday and Friday, I would expect a large move similar, somewhat similar to last year in a persistent negative gamma environment. There were often very large moves after the CPI reports came out every month. Often not as bad as expected or better than expected and price would rally implied volatility would drop and market makers could buy back their short futures contributing to a sharp rally after the CPI reports. So that would that's something that you want to look at look for in a negative gamma environment. A larger move after key data like CPI data. Alright, so that's the Vana model. Now let's start with actually so my thesis for the day was really looking for higher volatility. That was essentially my my thesis for the day based on the negative gamma positioning. Alright, let's take a look at some setups. Now review some setups. Oops. So I'm going to start with the SV 500 and I'm going to start with this hero signal here and we'll see what options traders have been doing today. And by the way, remember from yesterday that options traders were taking negative delta positions pretty much throughout the day. And it looks like they they really excuse me, they really didn't get paid yesterday, but they are getting paid today or at least they were earlier in the day. So this is the hero signal. This is provided to spot gamma subscribers. Hero stands for hedging impact and real time options. This is showing price for SPX that show more the white line and then market maker options trades traders options trades and the corresponding market maker hedging activity for a combined signal for SPX spy XSP and ES futures. So if you trade any form of the SAP 500, whether you're trading ES futures, spy share spy options, or SPX options, this is generally the signal that you want to take a look at the combined signal. So when traders are taking negative delta positions, market makers are taking the other side of those positions. So there they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure to remain delta neutral. All right, let's take a closer look at this now. I'm going to zoom in. So note the hero signal was trending down this morning, really making lower highs up until about several between 11 and 11 30. So let's go take a look at book map now. And of course, the the setup for this morning was to go short. Gonna zoom in. We'll look at data from around just after nine nine a.m. to to noon. So remember, from the open options traders were taking negative delta positions. So let's look at order flow now. So first of all, we see the kind of a double top that to test of the spy 448 level that acted as resistance. And after the second test note, the aggressive sellers coming in that was right after the the cash open that shown by the pink volume dots or the magenta volume dots showing aggressive sellers those the market sell orders selling as price tested that 448 level and that bearish order flow really continues almost down to spy 446 before a few aggressive buyers come in and note the large option traders were were buying with iceberg orders that shown by the rising light blue line there. And that is pretty typical behavior for larger traders buying weakness and selling strength with large iceberg orders they used to hide their size. And then on the other hand, you can see the following cumulative volume delta as well as the following yellow line showing cell stop orders fueling the move lower. So here's some of the cell stop order shown by these right bright red dots helping to fuel the move lower. Alright, so the target would have been the 445 level the spy 445 level and price did not quite make it down to that level. Alright, so that was the the obvious short set up this morning. And now it looks like price consolidated for almost two hours just around and below the spy 446 level before finally moving higher. So the larger traders with their iceberg orders are finally starting to get paid. Alright, let's take a look at NASDAQ. So let's go back to hero. So we know that options traders were taking negative delta positions. And really that so that slowed down from about 11 to just after one o'clock and then it is that they're starting to take negative delta positions again, the SB 500. Let's see what they're doing. So the rising orange line and the positive value here, positive notion of value shows that traders are buying calls. That's very typical behavior. In an index traders buying calls and buying puts that shown by the falling blue line and the negative notional value there. And so far the put buyers are more aggressive than the call buyers minus five billion versus positive two billion. And for most of the morning, the put buyers were rewarded until again around noon when price started to move higher as aggressive buyers came in. And let's go back to the total signal. Let's see what zero DTE traders are doing. So zero DTE traders looking at notional value here for the green line, that's about two billion versus the purple line, which is all expirations. That is today, tomorrow, Friday, next week, next month, all expirations. So today, the zero DTE trades that options that expire today, that is making up about two thirds of the total notion of value today for the S&B 500. Alright, let's go on to NASDAQ now. And we'll take a look at the live market in a few minutes. Let's go to NASDAQ and not as clear a signal to me for the NASDAQ as there was for the S&B 500. Definitely for the morning. Let's we'll zoom in on this. So this is a combined signal showing options trades and market maker hedging activity for NDX and QQQ. So for the first few minutes in the morning, up in first 20 minutes, there was a confirmation and then some confirmation short. And then trader started coming in and taking positive delta positions. And then that leveled off. So for me, hero was not nearly as clear and helpful for the NASDAQ. That's not always the case. But for today, as the S&B 500. So let's go take a look at book map, read, do a quick read of the order flow. And here's the reversal before the cash open that I mentioned at QQQ 373. And then price broke below the lower daily expected move. You can see the aggressive sellers coming in there. And price moved down all the way to the 369 level. And note here, the larger traders, first of all, looking at the falling light blue line, larger traders were selling with iceberg orders. So they were on the right side of the trade this morning. And this is the falling yellow line showing sell stop orders. So there's the sell iceberg. They're also buy iceberg orders there. The sell stops, all helping to feel the move lower. And note that aggressive buyers did start to come in right around here. But it took couple of hours and pretty substantial move lower before they are being rewarded. And note the cumulative volume delta line is rising, starting around when these larger buy volume dots come in. Right. So that is the NASDAQ. Let's go back to hero. And let's just check and see what zero DTE traders are doing in NASDAQ and making up a pretty large portion of the of the hedging flow today up until about the last 15 minutes or so. Now it looks like just comparing notional values zero DTE at the current time is about half of the water flow of the hedging flow today. All right, let's take a look at some stocks now. I'm going to start with Apple. Let's just zoom in on the morning here. Note the this is a nice divergence long in Apple. Note just a few minutes, maybe three, four minutes after the open traders options traders start to come in and take positive delta positions. Let's go take a look at book map. Let's go to Apple. So here's the first divergence long and price move down. Let's go take a take a look at hero again. And this next long was not really confirmed by options traders as hero continued after about 1120 to move down. Right. So that is Apple. Let's take a look at AMD and Karma FX. Yes, I will definitely take a look at Tesla today. So really the interesting thing about AMD here is the this large a couple of large block orders that shown by the vertical line here in hero. So these are bullish options trades in AMD. And let's see if we can figure out what they were. So first of all, we'll take a look at puts and calls. So we know that some large institution sold a bunch of puts around 1115 and then 1130. All right, let's see what. Let's take a another another deep dive into this and we'll separate out zero the next expiration, which in the case of a stock would be a Friday expiration next expiration. So they're for single stocks, there are no zero DT except on Friday. So there are weekly expirations. All right. So the the next expiry for puts is shown by this kind of light blue line there. Cyan maybe I'm not sure. And then call shown by the green line. So what this is is options that expire beyond this week. That's all that's all we know there. So longer term position. So somebody is taking more of a longer term position in AMD selling puts. We'll take a quick look at book map. So really that had no no impact on AMD today. So overall still pretty negative bearish water flow here for AMD. And one other thing I want to take a look at is let's go back to hero. I'm going to jump down to IWM. I don't have IWM in book map. But this is interesting that let me take a look at one thing. All right. So the RTY we'll just compare IWM with QQQ. So IWM down about 0.93% versus QQQ 1.2%. So IWM still down for the day. But not down as far as the QQQ. So a little bit less bearish for IWM today. But options traders are definitely taking positive delta positions and IWM today. And that helped to set up a nice divergence long as options traders were taking positive delta positions and the price reversed higher right around 1020 or so. All right. The next is meta and note the 310 is the key gamma strike. It looks like around that level did act as support. And in the morning options traders were taking negative delta positions confirming a short setup in meta. So meta there were multiple. I'll just draw that with this tool. So multiple Pavex for shorts to VWAP to the 315 level to the 314 level. And on with the target price didn't quite make it to that 310 key gamma strike. And note all the liquidity in that level acting as a magnet for price. Liquidity that comes in at the cash open. That's pretty typical of stocks. Nice target there high liquidity also the key gamma strike. And then the put walls down below at 307.50. All right. Microsoft also confirmation short strong correlation between options trades hedging flow and price action and multiple short setups. There's the first if you missed that entry at 326 325 and note the shift in order flow here. I normally don't look at CVD and with single stock some sometimes it helps. I think it just helps to illustrate the shift in order flow here. Note the all the green volume dots aggressive buyers start to come in and the shift higher and cumulative volume delta. So nice short setup here in Microsoft this morning. Let's go back and take a look at hero. So traders were selling calls. Let's just zoom in. So up until around 1030 they were selling calls and buying puts and then around 1045 they stopped buying puts and start selling puts. And that's shown by the rising blue line there. So it's aggressive buyers came in. Well at first of all the sequence traders started stopped buying puts started selling puts and then they stopped selling calls that activity leveled off and then remember the shift in order flow aggressive buyers start to come in and so far that has not really led too much of an up move maybe now but it certainly halted the move down. Now it looks like a large block trade here positive delta. All right let's go back and take a look at book map and Microsoft trying to move higher. All right the next is Nvidia very interesting day in Nvidia. Let's start by looking at hero to Nvidia. Zoom in on this. So first of all I'm going to go to the portion here before the news came out. So in the morning hedging flow options trades definitely negative confirmation short. Note that level levels that activity levels off and price consolidates. All right let's go take a look at book map that's up to about 1120. It's right around here. All right so as options traders were taking negative delta positions price breaks below this early wedge pattern this morning at VWAP and the 450 level moves down several points toward the liquidity target at 445 scroll over here and as far as I can tell this was this was news something about a new grace hopper super chip platform so the news bots algos that read the news saw that and initially reacted very bullish. Note the buy sweeps that shown by the small green dots all also the aggressive buyers shown by the large volume dots buy sweep up to 451 and then price reverses sharply lower down to and note all the sell sweeps shown by the bright red dots down to 441. So a quick nine move point lower nine point move lower big gaps in volume there not much liquidity it was such a sharp move lower and then aggressive buyers start to come in. So let's go back to hero and right around 1150 aggressive options traders or options traders started taking positive delta positions moving price higher and note again here's a large block block order institutional order positive delta all right let's take a look at Tesla. So Tesla there is very often a very strong correlation between options trades hedging flow and and price action so the initial trade this morning was short up until about 950 and then options traders started taking positive delta positions setting up that divergence long let's take a look at that. So here's the first divergence long in Tesla this morning and then there was another one just looking at these trend breaks pull backs and another nice divergence long right around 1145 that was the second one that I had shown on the chart as traders started taking positive delta positions let's go back to book map so here's the second long note the trend break pullback as options traders were taking positive delta positions and let's check for gamma levels so the hedge wall is at 252 50 250 is not a not a gamma level but it is a high liquidity level note these sellers these orders were consumed earlier today and they were again just a couple of minutes ago let's just zoom into this more closely so now it looks like well maybe they may have pulled no it looks like those orders were most likely filled and no then they came in and with buy orders limit buy orders and you can see the absorption indicator showing that that's what that light blue square means so orders here these were sellers at 250 those orders were consumed and then they came in and were buyers at 250 that's a flip of the order book and then those orders were were consumed all right so karma FX says the 268 level feels real to me like it's headed in that direction I'm just unsure of when and how long so let's take a look at certainly not today not in play for today and let's see what the the gamma structure looks like a little bit further out in time so I want to go to let's go to equity hub take a look at my watch list we'll take a look at tesla so this is the composite view chart showing that throughout the price range shown on this chart the usual price range that is all put dominated that's the and it's kind of a moderate moderate level there let's take a look at this put call impact chart we can zoom in on this so here's the two 270 level 267 below that two so 270 is the call wall all right so the this level the call wall is a i'm sorry the key gamma strike and the call wall are both at at 260 but there is a pretty significant gamma at the 270 level so the key gamma strike and call wall are 260 10 points below so karma facts if tesla is going to make it up to 270 it has to get through the 260 level first that is again the that so that should act as resistance so it's important to note there you can see all of the the high amount of gamma at that level again that's the call wall that is expected to act as resistance so to get to 268 tesla is going to have to make it through the 260 level first and let's take a look at one other thing here let's go to history and see what the how the levels have shifted today so first of all the call wall shifted significantly lower from 300 to 300 to 260 all right so that is bearish and then also the put wall shifted lower from 250 to 240 also bearish but i would interpret this shift lower in the call wall as more bearish so we'll keep an eye we'll keep an eye on this tomorrow and see how these if these levels shift keeping in mind that the order flow and hedging flow for right now for tesla are positive right so again the key point there is to get to 268 tesla is going to have to get through the uh 260 level first let's go take a look at book map all right so it looks like uh tesla is having some trouble at the 250 level all right let's take a look at uh the broad market let's go back to the s and b 500 s and b 500 making its way back up to the the high of the cash open the 448 level let's see what options traders are doing so right now for the s and b 500 options traders are taking taking the opposite taking negative delta positions and price continues to increase there was a strong correlation this morning that's pretty typical and then that is um that relationship really is no longer holding this afternoon this is one reason i uh really enjoy trading uh equity single stocks versus the index is there is often a very strong correlation between options trades hedging flow and price action throughout the day much easier to read and interpret all right let's take a look at the nasdaq and pretty similar situation options traders fading the move maybe this will take longer to play out uh maybe tomorrow options trader taking options traders taking negative delta positions and prices still starting starting to move higher let's go take a look at book map all right so the s and b 500 this afternoon is a little bit stronger than nasdaq remember the s and b 500 is making it has made it back up to the uh around the opening print and uh at the cash open and uh nasdaq so far has not done that all right let's take a look any uh i've got a minute or two left anyone have any stocks they want me to take a look at before i wrap it up here let's take a look at invidia see what it's doing so invidia continues the uh the move higher aggressive buyers coming in trim break pull back long entry multiple long entries on the way up let's go back to tesla and see how it is resolving with the test of the 250 level so now the sweeps indicator is showing there was a buy sweep shown by small green dots up to the 250 level then a sell sweep down remember we saw the the flip of the book there options trader traders coming in with limit buy orders those were consumed with the sell sweep and we can see the absorption there and now aggressive buyers are starting to come in and let's see what options traders are doing and see if they're supporting this move let's go back to tesla and so far tesla um options traders continue to take positive delta position and i would i would definitely be looking for uh along here not a recommendation by the way so options traders taking positive delta positions so they are buying calls and selling puts both notional values are positive buying calls selling puts market makers take the opposite side of that and they have to buy stock there's their delta exposure so we'll take one last look at at book map so now it looks like some sellers have come in at 250 so tesla may struggle at that level a bit consolidate just like it did at the around the 249 level before resolving higher all right rs says uh great stream uh thank you thanks for the compliment thanks for your kind words all right that's all i have for today i want to thank everyone for watching thank you for your questions and comments and i will see you tomorrow thanks again bye