 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. The focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug chat channel in Discord is Options, Order Flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading, and the first is planning, and I use positional analysis. I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day, as well as the directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in Spike Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And on topic, questions and comments are welcome, and I will be watching the Options-Doug chat channel in Discord as well as the chat in YouTube. So again, your questions and comments are welcome. And good morning, Rob. I assume you can see my screen and audio is good. Somebody would just let me know. All right, let's get started. What I want to talk about today, first of all, go over the news economic data that came out today, as well as the rest of the week, and then we'll go over our positional analysis, and then finally we'll talk about some setups. All right, so today, the data that came out this morning was retail sales and PPI. And retail sales came in much less, same as forecast, minus 0.4% and much less than previous. And then also the PPI came in less than forecast and less than the previous. And then for the rest of the week, let me, I meant to check this earlier. I believe, let me just check tomorrow. I believe there's an ECB announcement tomorrow. Well, I'm showing you US only. So again, I believe the, yeah, this, well, it's not showing it here. But I believe the ECB does announce their rate decision tomorrow. Okay, sorry, I didn't check that earlier. All right, so that is today, the PPI retail sales will do further investigation for tomorrow. And then Friday, of course, is the big monthly options expiration, the March 17th options expiration. All right, let's take a look at some charts. And first of all, we'll look at the S&P 500. And this is the ES futures, S&P 500. And before I dig into this chart, let's take a look at a larger timeframe. And I'm going to look at some thinkorswim charts. This is the S&P 500. This is a 20 day one-hour chart showing just price and key spot gamma levels. And these spot gamma levels are provided to spot gamma subscribers in a think script. And this think script, you have to update manually. And it takes a couple of minutes. All right, so the levels on the charts. First of all, the key level today is the 3850 level. And it looks like there's, and we'll look at a smaller timeframe in a minute, but it looks like that has been tested multiple times. That was noted as support in the spot gamma AM founders note. And then the other levels that are in play are the 3800 put wall. Here's the 4000 key gamma strike. And then note the drop in the call wall down to 4065. And the significance of that level is it is the call strike of the JP Morgan collar that expires at the end of the month. That's the actual quarterly that expires on March 31st. And that is the, again, the call strike of the JP Morgan collar, their monthly or quarterly collar. And I'll talk more about it, what these levels are in just a minute, but those are the levels that are in play. So that is a thinkorswim 20 day one hour chart. And now let's take a look at another thinkorswim chart. This is a one day one minute chart. Again, thinkorswim showing the key levels and showing the 3850 level there. Notice the support and it's been tested multiple times today and so far seems to be holding. All right, let's go to go to book map now. So this is the again, the ES futures. And I'm showing the same levels on this chart. I've got a couple of columns of levels. These are the spot gamma cloud notes, this SG column. And these are the same levels that are provided to spot gamma subscribers for a number of platforms. And this is for book map. These are in cloud notes that are updated automatically. And this is showing the key SPX levels, as well as combo levels that combine SPX and spy gamma levels into one level. And then that is shown in a in an SPX equivalent price and then converted to an equivalent ES price. And right now for these cloud notes, book map is using a 30 point difference, which is pretty close to the actual I, I calculated 31 points earlier today. And 30 is good enough. So I'm just using their levels. And for a day is volatile as today. Really doesn't matter that much. So what this chart is showing is the first of all the let me just I'm going to zoom all the way out. So that this is showing the open yesterday afternoon at 6pm Eastern time and showing the fairly benign price action, not much movement until it looks like this is when the the news came out about credit squeeze. And then there was that sharp drop lower from around ES 3950. And that would be so that that would be at let's see that would be at so 30 20 points higher. So 39 20. Okay, so the drop and that's SPX 39 20, the drop down to the 39 50 support level. And I'm showing that here in my note these are my cloud notes here. And I'm showing these support levels. Also the key and there's the resistance level at 3900. And then key spy levels. And that's the 3390 spy 390 put wall key gamma strike. And then I'm also showing the ES round number levels, big round number levels, zero and 50. So those are the levels in play. And, you know, I guess the most important thing to note on this chart is the drop around 5am Eastern time. And then again, so far this 3850 SPX 3850 appears to be holding as support. And we'll talk about talk about this more when we go over setups. Okay, so let's talk about shifts and levels. And there were some shifts and levels. First of all for SPX, the volatility trigger did drop from it just dropped slightly from 39 60 yesterday to 39 50 yesterday. And today. So a slight drop in the volatility trigger. And the volatility trigger is spot gammas proprietary gamma flip level. And above that level, that indicates that market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. And in a positive gamma environment, that's assuming that traders are short calls, market makers are long calls, and they have to sell futures as price increases to hedge their delta exposure. And then as price drops, they can buy back their short future. So in a positive gamma environment, that tends to subdue volatility with with market makers trading against price. And then on the other hand, below that level in a negative gamma environment is just works the other way around trader are long puts market makers are short puts. And they have to sell futures as price drops to hedge their delta exposure. And as price increases, they can buy back their short futures. So in the case of a negative gamma environment, like, like now, market makers are trading with the direction of price. And that tends to increase volatility. Again, that's typical of a negative gamma environment. And then also I mentioned before, the call wall dropped from 4200 down to 4065 today. And again, that is that's important to note that is the the call strike of the JP Morgan quarterly collar. All right, for spy, the put wall increased yesterday from 380 to 390. And then the call wall dropped from 430, which was way out of range, down to 397. All right, the put wall is the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And that can be expected to act as support. And then the call wall is the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And then QQQ, there are quite a few shifts and levels. The volatility trigger shifted down slightly from 296 to 295. And the put wall shifted up from 280 yesterday to 285 today. And then the key gamma strike shifted up from 290 yesterday to 300 today. And the key gamma strike is the strike with the largest absolute gamma. And that can be expected to act as support or resistance or a magnet for price. So let's take a look at these levels. We can take a look at first of all the SAP 500. These are the absolute gamma levels. And this will show you what I'm talking about. So this is the SPX. And this is the zero line here, this horizontal line above that line. The black bars are showing call gamma or positive gamma. And below that line the teal bars are showing put gamma or negative gamma. And this is the 4000 level. That is the absolute or key gamma strike. The strike with the largest absolute gamma. And then here is the 3,800 put wall. The strike with the largest net negative gamma. And the call wall is way up here. Oh, I'm sorry. It has been for quite a while. And it has shifted now to the 4065 level. Again, that's the call strike with the JP Morgan collar. So still not a significant amount of gamma at that level. But it is according to the calculation to strike with the largest net positive gamma. So that is SPX. And note the dominance of put gamma below the 4000 level. Although it appears to be yesterday there was a build and some call gamma from 3,900 to 4,000. So that's SPX. Let's take a look at SPI. And for SPI, 390 is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. And the put wall moved up to that level as well. So 390 is the put wall and the key gamma strike. And then the call wall is at 397. There it is. The strike with the largest net positive gamma. And note the dominance of put gamma below 400. Although it does appear that there was a little bit of a build and call gamma between 390 and 400. And let's take a look at the NASDAQ now. And for NASDAQ, we'll look at QQQ. Again, the same absolute gamma levels this time for QQQ. And here's the 300 key gamma strike or absolute gamma strike. And the put wall at 285. And the call wall remains at 310. All right, let's take a look at data. And this is the spot gamma AM founders note. And I usually, during my webinars, take a look at the gamma notional. This is market makers position on the gamma curve. This left column is showing SPX. The middle column is SPI. And the far right column is QQQ. So this is market makers position on the gamma curve for all these. And notice it is negative. So again, for all these indices, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposures price price decreases. And if price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short futures. Okay, so this is, again, SPX negative minus 706, market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX minus 706. Now this did become less negative than yesterday. And yesterday was less negative than Monday. So this is shifting slightly less negative for the last couple of days. So yesterday SPX gamma notional was minus 873. And today it's minus 706. And the same for SPI. On Monday it was minus 3000. Today minus 2824. And today minus 2285. So given that these numbers, the drop in the gamma notional from especially from yesterday to day, to me indicates that the rally yesterday during parts of the day were driven by the put VATR rally. Implied volatility drops. Price increases. Those puts lose value. So market makers delta exposure decreases and they can buy back their short futures. And again this drop in gamma notional indicates that that was in play yesterday. And then finally QQQ also has dropped for the last three days yesterday. Gamma notional for minus, gamma notional was minus 695. And today it's minus 401. Okay, so RJ, I'll get to your question when we go back to the book map chart in just a minute. So let's take a look now at the VANA charts. And this will be a graphical illustration of what I was just talking about. Alright, so this is SPX again showing delta notional. This is market makers position delta notional on the vertical axis and price on the horizontal axis. Sloping this way is typical of a negative gamma environment. And this is indicating that market makers delta notional will increase as price decreases. And that means again they have to sell futures as price decreases to hedge their delta exposure. And it works just the other way around like we saw yesterday. If price increases implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short futures. And that change in implied volatility is shown by this green curve, which is the current expiration. And that's showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and with changes in implied volatility. And that's the VANA effect. And then the black line is showing how market makers delta notional changes as time passes. And that is the charm effect, the change in delta as time passes. So that is SPX. And let's take a look at SPI. Actually before we do that, let's take a look at how this has changed over the last three days. So notice that this curve has become less steep over the last since Monday. And that may change today if, you know, given the drop today. So that's SPX. There's SPI. And notice the curve is steeper. Gamma notional for SPI today is about three times more negative than SPX. And there's QQQ. All right, so that's an illustration of what I was just talking about with Gamma notional and how market makers have to hedge and then showing how that changes with implied volatility, changes with implied volatility and changes in time as time passes. Right, so the last part of my preparation, I look at the current key Gamma strike for the stocks on my watch list. I look at this every day. And then I compare the key Gamma strike from the previous day. And I color code these green if the key Gamma strike increase from the previous day. And I color code it red if the key Gamma strike decrease from the previous day. So the previous key Gamma strike that's from yesterday is shown in the E column. And the current key Gamma strike, the key Gamma strike for today is shown in the D column. And this is just a quick visual reference. And the way to approach this is a couple ways. You know, if you see this and you're interested in trading Microsoft, for example, go in and go into Equity Hub and do some further research and see what happened with the other levels as well. So just as an example, we can take a look at, take a look at Microsoft, take a look at the history. This is the history showing all of the key daily levels. There's Microsoft so we can see the increase in the key Gamma strike and all the other levels held. So anyway, I interpret this as somewhat bullish and especially seeing all of these levels for these large cap tech stocks increase from the previous day. This indicates increased interest in the key Gamma strikes. And these stocks, they're looking for higher prices, accepting higher prices. So again, I interpret this as bullish and especially when I see this on all these large cap tech stocks. And also notice VIX dropping the interest in the calls at higher levels, actually dropping some. So I interpret that as bullish as well. So I think under normal circumstances, given this and this, I guess a little bit of an increase in demand in calls in the indices, I would normally interpret that as bullish. But the news out of Europe or around 5 a.m. just through a wrench in that. Okay, so let's take a look at some setups now. And let's go take a look at at hero. And this is the hero signal for the S&P 500. And note that it looks like this symbol that you have to put in here did change. Yesterday it was SPX plus SPI. And I assume this is the same thing today. This is a new symbol, new designation. Again, I'm at this point just assuming it's the same. So there is the S&P 500. And again, I'm assuming this is the combined signal for SPX plus SPI price is shown with a white line. And the purple line is showing the total hero signal. For those of you who may not be familiar with hero, it is the hedging impact of real time options. And this is showing just what it says, the hedging impact of real time options trades. And again, for this symbol SPX plus SPI. So this is showing a bearish setup this morning. And then now, hero is leveled off and now seems to be setting up a move higher. Alright, so let's go take a look at book map. I'm going to zoom in on the, so a pretty choppy setup. And here's the session here. Up and down. And it looks like, hero is supporting the move down from above ES 3900. And RJ, if this is what you're asking, this is ES 3900. And I just, I draw this just for my own reference. So I assume that's what you're talking about. That's ES 3900. You know, it's, I just like to have the line and the label there just again as a quick visual reference is something for me to look at. And, you know, I don't have to search around on the current order book. No, it's, it's not the key gamma levels, the key prices are shown in terms of spy and SPX. So, you know, this is, it doesn't have anything to do with what's spot gamma or gamma levels. So again, this is just for my own reference. I just like to see again the zeros and the fives for the, for ES. And it has been acting as resistance today. So pretty choppy trade here in the S&P 500. And this 39 or 3850 level has kind of roughly held a support, you know, several breaches, but price has, has moved higher. And James in YouTube asked, so from the data, you think we can move up from this level. And so it depends on what you mean by we, first of all, today I was, I was looking for bullish setups in the tech stocks. And really, I thought tech stocks were, there were some better setups in tech stocks than the S&P 500. So the S&P 500 has, you know, it's a combination of multiple sectors, financials, energy. So again, I'm looking for the, you know, given the, I showed all the green in the key gamma strike list for a lot of tech stocks. And I saw a nice long divergence in QQQ. So this is the S&P 500. And again, the 3850 level so far has been holding a support. And Ruma asked, do I watch hero throughout the day for, for hero levels? I watch it is real time. Yes, hero is real time hedging impact in real time. So let's go back and take a look at hero. And this is the S&P 500 again. And so I'm watching this for just the hedging impact. And then I have the levels marked on my charts. Let's take a look at another symbol. And we can, we can see if there were any levels in play. So here, for example, in Microsoft, this key gamma strike 150 key gamma strike is in range. So those, so those the key gamma levels, whatever they are key gamma strike put wall, call wall, hedge wall, volatility trigger are shown on the hero charts if they're in range. Okay, so RJ asked, can we take a look at zero DDE for the S&P 500? Alright, so we'll, we'll go back and do that. And RJ, you were asking a lot about this yesterday. I, to be honest, you know, it's interesting, but I would not not necessarily nitpick on this so much. I'm not sure if this is going to make any difference in a trading decision. So it's very close to the total expirations. So it looks like zero DTE is driving today. I'm not sure if that would make any difference in any trading decision, whether traders are trading zero DTE or options that expire at the end of the week. I don't think it would for me. I would only look at zero DTE if it was providing a cleaner signal, more in line with price action. Alright, so that's the S&P 500. And so Frank and YouTube asked, what are those indicators at the bottom? And can I add them to my toss version of book map? So I assume you're talking about, let's go back to book map. I assume you're talking about this sub chart. And this is showing icebergs, iceberg orders with the light blue line, stop orders with the yellow line, and then CVD cumulative volume delta with the dark blue line. So the toss version of book map is a very simplified version, does not support add ons. So CVD comes with book map, both the toss version and this global plus version that I'm using, but this stop orders stops in icebergs are not available for the thinkorswim version. Thinkorswim version, again, does not support add ons. And these are an add on that you can add to your, add to global or global plus. And you can purchase the add ons in the book map marketplace. Alright, so let's take a look at some other setups. And again, I was, I was focused on tech stocks today. So let's take a look at first one. Let's take a look at Amazon. And let's go take a look at hero now for Amazon. And what I was looking at, let's just focus on the morning session here. And this is usually when I trade, looking at this definite bullish divergence. So hero spikes up traders are taking positive delta positions. And then they continue that hero line continues to slope up to the right. Notice how price drops. Then there's a nice trend break here. And price moves higher. So very clear divergent setup with Amazon. Let's go take a look at book map. And then there's the trend break. And the absorption just above the 93 liquidity level. And then the move higher targets at the first of all first target at the 94 hedge wall. Next target at the 95 key gamma strike. And then there's the call wall up at 97. Let me just make this a little bit easier to read and increase the size of the dots. So the dots, if you're not familiar with book map, the dots, green dots are showing market buy orders. Pink dots are showing market sell orders. And notice the dominance of the green dots here. And we can confirm that by looking at this cumulative volume delta and note the steady increase in cumulative volume delta. This is definitely bullish order flow. And in the morning it was confirmed by bullish hedging flow. So a nice long setup here in Amazon. And clear targets above again at 95, really at 95, 96 and 97. All right, the next was meta. And hero here confirm short and long setups for meta. Note the very strong correlation between options trades hedging flow and price action. Let's go take a look at book map. So there's meta price again confirming the first long or first short, then along up to the 195 liquidity target level. So price reverses here, absorption at the 191 level. And though it looks like somewhat of a sweep into the 195 liquidity level. Let me just check the settings here. Oh, no wonder. Not showing absorption and sweeps. Now it's showing too much. Let me just tone this down a bit. So this is showing the absorption at the 191 level. And I expected to see a little bit more of a sweep here. But you can see these small green dots right here. That's a buy sweep up into the 195 level. Okay, there's another sweep. It was not a not being shown here. Another buy sweep shown with these green dots here that 59, 456 buy sweep up into the 196 level. So long setup on the on the trend break first pullback with targets up above at 195 and 196. And it looks also like 196 20. All right, so that's meta. Let's take a look at Microsoft. And Microsoft was really really bullish right off the right off the bat at the open. Looks like I need to make a change to the sweeps here. Tone this down a bit, absorption a little bit more. And let's zoom in on from the open until about 1130. So note the quick move higher right at the right at the open. Then a move back down just below we be whapped to the 260 key gamma strike. Note the buy sweep there these small green dots bright green dots. That's a buy sweep. And then another check test at the VWAP move higher. And then multiple tests to VWAP. And finally you move up toward the 265 level. So very, very bullish setup and Microsoft. And one thing to keep in mind as I think, you know, regardless of what what is going on with with financials when there is some issue, I think these large cap tech stocks can often act as a safe haven. Microsoft Apple stocks with, you know, great cash flow, great earnings, huge balance sheets again can often act as safe haven. So that is, you know, another reason to to look to large cap tech in times like this. So here's Microsoft very bullish from the open. I think it was the first stock that I was watching that would that broke higher. All right, let's go take a look at at hero. So that's meta. Take a look at Microsoft. And this is a little bit confusing. So what this is showing is a large block trade. And let's see what. So this is traders buying puts. And that looks like around 1147. So what I'm going to do is not sure what happened there. Right, we're back to Microsoft. What I'm going to do is zoom so that that large block trade is off the screen. And this is what I was looking at in the morning. And then let's shift and take a look at puts and calls separately. So the rising orange line is indicating that traders were were buying calls. The falling blue line indicates that they were also buying puts. And let's zoom in just a little bit more here up until about 11 o'clock. So anyway, it appears to me that traders were buying calls and that was driving price action. And that was setting up multiple longs as price pulled back. Moving up toward that 265 level. Let's go take a look at book map again. Let's just check CVD as well. And also bullish just like meta. Rising CVD. And you can again tell that by all the green dots there. So aggressive traders with their market buy orders are in there in Microsoft as well. Right next stock and video and note the right now the 240 key gamma strike and all the liquidity at that level that it has been in the order book since the RTH opened at 9 30. Definitely in play and price looks like it. It wants to hit that level. Right. Let's go take a look at at hero now for Nvidia. And here's Nvidia confirming shorts and longs short of the morning long and short again. Now it's not really not really confirming this latest move. Right. Let's take a look at QQQ. Right. This is what I was looking at this morning. And I posted this in discord this divergent setup hero continuing to rise from the open traders are taking positive delta positions price falling and it took some patience and you know a couple of small short scouts until this finally finally worked out with a again I posted this in discord rising rising hero and then finally the shift in order flow shift in price action from bearish to bullish. Let's go take a look at book map QQQ going down these dots a little bit zoom in. So this is the morning session and there were several instances where I'll use this tool. So several instances of these my sweeps coming in around the 294 level and then finally price breaks higher and note the shift in CVD cumulative volume delta from bearish to bullish and the quick move up to the 297 level and some chop just above the volatility trigger and the upper edge of the expected move and then another sharp move higher to 297. But this was signal well in advance with hero then finally confirm with price action and order flow. Right. So in discord RJ asked to spot gamma give the users ability to export a given days hero data and the answer is no if you want to do wanted to do some analysis on it. So no hero does provide a rolling five day history. So you can go into hero any time even when the market's not open and look at the last five days and do your analysis that way. But there's no way to as far as I know no way to export that data. You just have to go to hero and let me show that go back to hero and you can look at hero for the last last five days. So here and then you can go back to any one day as well. So if I wanted to look at just the ninth I could change that in date to the ninth. Let's go back to today. So that that's the extent of the historical analysis that you can do with with hero go back for the last five days. But you can't export it. And in in YouTube Timmy asked what does it mean if CVD is going opposite the direction of price. And this happened to Tesla yesterday during the morning. And I see that quite often. And I will generally favor hero over over CVD. CVD for me is just an added confluence. But I you know I certainly confirm that with price action. And the best setup is with CVD and hero going in the same direction. So if price is rising CVD is rising and heroes rising that certainly is a you know strong confirmation for long. All right. So there's QQQ there was the setup in the morning. And let's see. Let's we've already looked at the S&P 500. Let's wrap it up with Tesla. And so today Tesla. Hero is definitely definitely definitely bearish. And let's just see what traders are doing Tesla. So they're selling calls and buying puts. Let's go take a look at book map. So actually a couple and I'm still on QQQ couple of still a couple of long setups. Another trend break here. And move higher off of the three nine two ninety five volatility trigger heading up towards the two ninety nine combo one level. Let's go take a look at Tesla. So again remember hero has been trending down all day. And today CVD is definitely confirming that that move lower in Tesla. So it could be like I said the traders are going for the solid large cap tech stocks. Amazon Microsoft I didn't. And we can do a quick check on on Apple. I didn't see much of a setup in Apple. That's why I skipped over it. But it is it's starting to look strong this absorption at the one fifty key gamma strike absorption at the one fifty key gamma strike and then price moving up past the upper edge of the expected move. And that's pretty typical for a lot of tech stocks. And Truman says thanks for the meta update last evening. You're welcome. So a strong ride out of the gate made a good trade off at great. Good to hear. Glad that was helpful. It took those posting those setups takes takes a quite a bit of time to mark them up and post them. So I'm glad that that it helped somebody. All right. So this is this is all that I had today. Let's take a final look at the S&P 500. And now it looks like finally it may be resolving to the upside up toward the thirty nine hundred level SBX thirty nine hundred level and confirming it looks like large traders were in there with their iceberg orders. And that can often have the effect of eventually supporting a move higher positive traders buying with large iceberg orders hiding their size. And then stop orders start to feel the move higher. We can see with the rising yellow line there. So it looks like a pretty sharp sharp stop run up toward the SPX thirty nine hundred level. Right. So that again that's all I have. Want to thank you for watching. Thanks for your questions and comments. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye