 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. Okay, JEC says audio is good today. All right, great. Yeah, I accidentally had muted my microphone yesterday, so thanks for the confirmation. Appears that everything is good, so again, welcome. 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 today as every day 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, and 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. And I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in Spot Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups, for entries and exits. I think this is a new way of looking at the market that provides a significant edge. And just to be clear, I'm talking about the influence of the options market on stocks, futures, and options. And I will be talking about setups, and those setups can be, you can take them any way you want with shares, futures, or options. So I'm just talking about generic setups here, and not necessarily which instrument or which version of an instrument that you should trade. Okay, on topic questions and comments are welcome again. These are my topics, order flow, options order flow, and the impact of options markets on stocks, futures, and options. And I will be watching chat in the options-dug chat channel and Discord and also the chat in YouTube. So again, on topic questions and comments are welcome. All right, let's get started. So the items that I want to cover today, first of all, go over the news, economic data and events for today and the rest of this week and also briefly touch on some economic data coming up in advance next week. And then we'll go through our positional analysis. And then finally we'll take a look at some setups. All right, so first of all, today, the news today, jobless claims came out at 8 30 a.m. Eastern time. And it was a little bit weaker than forecast or more more jobless came claims than forecast. And I have never seen a reaction like this to jobless claims. The from the at the time the data was released 8 30 a.m. to the opening high. E.S. was up 37 and a half points. And I maybe you guys in JEC, Trader HE, anybody else in in Discord, if you've ever seen anything like this for jobless claims, which is usually a non-event. And I guess traders were thinking that this jobless claims being weaker than expected might might point to the employment situation report that comes out tomorrow is being weaker than expected. So anyway, I've never seen anything like this from jobless claims. The market is just so focused on on data, you know, especially since Fed Chair Powell, I guess, re reiterated that the Fed will be focusing on the data coming up. And so speaking of that again tomorrow, the employment report at 8 30 a.m. Eastern time. And then next week, and we'll cover this more next week, the CPI report, PPI report, and then the big event for the week is the options expiration, the big monthly and quarterly options expiration on March 17. All right, let's take a look at some charts now. We'll start our positional analysis. This is the S&P 500 futures ES. And before I dig into this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger timeframe, longer timeframe. This is SPX, a 20 day one hour chart. And this is just simply showing price and key gamma levels. And these levels are from Spot Gamma. They're provided to Spot Gamma subscribers in a Think Script. And you have to manually update this. And it's it takes a couple minutes. So this is a 20 day one hour chart. Again, just showing price and key levels. And just to point out a few levels, and I'll talk more about these in a minute. And what exactly they mean. So here are the key levels. The put wall at 3,900. And then here is the 4,000 key gamma strike. That's also the volatility trigger. And then still up here at 4,200 is the call wall. And now let's take a look at a shorter timeframe. Again, just focusing on a simple chart of price and key levels. And this is a, again, an SPX level SPX chart showing just price and levels for a one day one minute chart here. So this is showing this 410 level, which was noted. This is 40, 40 10 SPX 40 10, noted as a pivot level in the Spot Gamma AM founders note. Here's the 4,000 level. Again, the key gamma strike as well as the volatility trigger. And then this is the 39 60 39 60 support level that was also noted in the AM founders note right here. That's the purple line. So 40 10 was noted as a pivot. And then 39 60 noted as support. And then of course, here's the big 4,000 level. And while we're looking at this, the volatility trigger is spot gammas proprietary gamma flip level. And above that, the assumption is that market makers are in a positive gamma position. And they will need to hedge against price to hedge their delta exposure. And then below the volatility trigger, Spot Gamma market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. And that means they will need to hedge with price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to increase volatility. So above the volatility trigger, you would expect market makers to be trading against price and tends to suppress volatility. And it's just the opposite below the volatility trigger. So with a break below the volatility trigger, I would definitely be looking for shorts. And I was actually looking for shorts well before that. And I'll talk more about that. All right, so that is the bigger picture, just looking at price and levels. And now let's take a look at the bookmap chart. And one reason that I look at the look at those other charts, it's just very simple. There's a lot going on here in the bookmap chart. I have two columns of levels here. The first is the spot gamma cloud notes. These are the same levels provided to spot gamma subscribers, they provide those for a variety of platforms. And here it's shown for bookmap. These cloud notes are updated automatically every night. So this is showing the, there's that SPX 4000 level. Right now, spot gamma is using a five point difference between ES and SPX. And I calculated about a two point difference. So I've marked my levels a little bit lower. And this is my, these are my cloud notes. So there's that 40 10 level. And I'm also noting key spy levels. And there's the 400 spy key gamma strike volatility trigger. Here is the, I think a closer, closer to being accurate level for the 4000 SPX 4000 level. And then this is the 39 60 support level again that was noted in the AM founders note. And then finally, I'm also showing big round numbers, the zeros in the fifties for ES. So there were some levels in play and also the advantage of bookmap here is that you can see liquidity in the water book and the heat map shows the history of that liquidity. And up here at 40 20 that's showing all the cell orders in there. And that that proved to be resistance today. Traders traded up to that level, not quite to that level, and then started to move lower. And a couple things to notice here is the starting around, oh, just before 10 a.m. This dark blue to pink line is cumulative volume delta. And that shifted downward negative just before 10 a.m. And then price continues lower. And then also note the the drop below the four SPX 4000 ES 4000 level, and then just avoid of levels down to the 39 60. And then here are the levels below at 39 50. If this 39 60 support level does not hold. And when we look at setups, I'll look at this in more detail and see that we can see that options traders were not having any of this rally in the morning, I guess they briefly traded in the direction of price bullishly, but they quickly quickly shifted to bearish. And now the S&P 500 is taken back all of that move after the data this morning and more. Okay, let's talk about shifts in levels now. And I'm tracking the key daily levels for the S&P 500 SPX and spy as well as stocks. And I'm looking at the volatility trigger the zero gamma level put wall call wall and key gamma strike. And again, the volatility trigger is spot gammas proprietary gamma flip level. And that level shifted lower for SPX from yesterday to today, just slightly from four thousand five to four thousand and remain the same at 400 for spy. And then for QQQ shifted lower from 300 yesterday to 296 today. And then the only other significant shift was the call wall for spy shifted down from 408 yesterday to 405 today. So this this has kind of been a an ongoing theme of very little shifts in levels in the indices and in stocks as well. And I think you can attribute a lot of this to the to the volume in zero DTE options options that expire today, they're not held overnight. So they have this volume high volume for options that trade today, have an influence on the market today, but don't have any influence on on positions because they are closed at the end of the day or, you know, sometime during the day. So that that just points to the importance of marking your levels on the charts and then watching the watching the order flow and the hedging flow during the day. And that's kind of been the approach that I've been taking recently. All right, so those are the shifts and levels. And now let's take a look at the let's take a look at the gamma levels. All right, so these this is where those levels come from. So this is SPX absolute gamma levels. And what this chart is showing is market makers position at these different strikes. This is the zero level. And above that's positive gamma or call gamma. And below that level that showing put gamma or negative gamma with the teal bars. So black bars are called gamma positive gamma and teal bars are negative gamma put gamma. All right, so this is SPX showing the 4000 key gamma strike. That's the absolute gamma strike. The strike with the largest absolute gamma that can act as support or resistance or as a magnet. And then 3900 is the put wall. No change there. And 4200 is the call wall. The put wall is the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And that can be expected to act as support. And the 4200 call wall, that's the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. So that's SPX. And note the the predominance of put gamma below the 4000 level. And that is also the volatility trigger, the gamma flip level. All right, so that's SPX. Let's take a look at spy. For spy 400 is the key gamma strike. 390 is the put wall. Strike with the largest net negative gamma. And then remember the call wall shifted down from 408, which didn't make a lot of sense. It's usually a 0 or a 5 level. And so now it's at 405. And again, that's the call wall, the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And just like SPX, note the the dominance of put gamma below the 400 level and some call gamma above the 400 level. All right, while we're on this on this page, let's take a look at the combo levels. Let's start with SPX. And this is showing market makers position on the gamma curve, their position for at these different strikes for a combined SPX and spy shown in terms of SPX levels. So here is the there's the 4000 strike. Again, that's that is the volatility trigger. And note the put gamma below that level. Call gamma positive gamma above that level. So that's SPX. Here's spy. Same thing. Here is the right around here is the 400 level. There it is. Put gamma negative gamma below. Call gamma positive gamma above. But the put gamma clearly dominates. And then finally, right, welcome trader Pete glad you're here. All right, then finally, while we're on this page, let's take a look at the open interest in volume. And this is for SPX put data. Let's actually let's we'll show call data and input data here. And we'll let's focus on the put data zoom in on this so we can see it. The black bars are showing the volume. And this is from yesterday. And volume, that's what traded yesterday. And then the small teal bars. That's the open interest change. So this has been pretty typical for a while now is the the huge volume compared to the open interest change. So that just reinforces the fact fact that you know, the bulk of the volume is in zero DTE options. And that appears to be a good part of what's moving price around. And for the last few days, it has been zero DTE options traders have been selling highs and buying lows. And in just a few minutes, we'll take a look and see what they've been doing today. All right, so that is those are the S&P 500 gamma levels. And the open interest and the combo levels. Let's take a quick look at NASDAQ. And for NASDAQ, we'll just look at qqq. And for qqq. 300 is the key gamma strike. 290 is the put wall. And 310 is the call wall. And again, just like the S&P 500 predominance of put gamma below the 300 level and call gamma above. All right, let's take a look at data now. And I like it to focus on the gamma notional. This is market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX, SPY, and qqq. SPX in the left column, SPY in the middle column, and qqq on the right column. And notice that all of these values are negative. So this means that for all these indices, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to hedge their delta exposure as price decreases. They have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure as price decreases. And then if price increases, they can buy back their short futures. So that's typical in a negative gamma environment. Again, market makers are trading with price to hedge their delta exposure, and that can tend to increase volatility in a negative gamma environment. And these numbers shifted slightly less negative from yesterday, but still all significantly negative, especially for SPY. So SPX yesterday was gamma notional, market makers position on the gamma curve for SPX was minus 565. And today it has shifted to minus 429. And I'm comparing morning to morning. Okay, the for SPY. Hold on just a second. Let me check something. What I'm seeing on YouTube doesn't. I'm not seeing any questions on YouTube. I don't know why, but it looks like my stream is going. Okay, so that is again, gamma notional shifted slightly less negative SPX minus 565 yesterday to minus 429 today. SPY minus 2336 yesterday to minus 2026. Okay, so JTT JC says stream is good. No questions so far. Great. Thanks for confirming. Okay, and then QQQ also shifted to slightly less negative minus 704 yesterday to minus 506. So still very negative, gamma notional for all indices here. Alright, let's take a look at the Vanna charts and these charts will graphically illustrate what I'm just talking about. This is for SPX showing how market makers delta notional changes as price changes and with changes implied volatility. And that's shown by the green curve, which shows again, market makers delta notional how it changes with changes in price and with implied volatility. And that's the Vanna effect, the change in delta with the change in implied volatility. And this is showing for SPX that market makers delta notional will increase as price decreases. And again, they have to sell futures as price drops because their delta notional is increasing and they want to remain delta neutral. So that is SPX. And let's take a look at spy. Same thing. Just a steeper curve. Remember the gamma notional was much more negative, much larger, almost five times the gamma notional of SPX. And then here's QQQ. The same thing again, negative gamma. All right, let's take a look at and wrap up our planning and positional analysis by looking at the current key gamma strike for the stocks on my watch list. This is my primary watch list, mostly large cap tech stocks. And I'm noting the key gamma strike from yesterday, that's the E column, the previous key gamma strike. And then the current key gamma strike is for today. And I compare the values from today versus yesterday. And I note, I color code these just for a quick reference. And here, for example, AMD and NVIDIA, the key gamma strike both increase for both of these. And I take that as a bearish signal. And what I will typically do is go into equity hub and do further research and see what the additional levels did, the hedge wall, call wall, put wall, see if those levels changed as well. So again, the initial interpretation for this was bullish. And just the opposite for Tesla. And we looked at the equity hub for Tesla yesterday and saw that there were some shifts lower. This 200 key gamma strike has not moved for 10 days. So this is the first drop lower in the key gamma strike for Tesla. And I interpreted this as bearish. So mixed signals there bullish for the semiconductors and they've been AMD and NVIDIA have both been strong this week. And Tesla has been on the weak side. Okay, so that's the planning preparation. I know how the market makers were positioned on the gamma curve today. And really, for my thesis for the day for the S&P 500, given the lack of shifts in levels and the predominance of zero DDE volume, my thesis and approach for the day was to establish the levels, the initial trading range, and then watch how the options traders both the zero DTE and and the longer term traders in the SPX plus spy and we'll take a look at that in just a minute, see how they were positioning. And that was a big clue for today as well as the past few days. And then for stocks here, I, you know, again, was bullish on AMD and NVIDIA and bearish on Tesla. All right, so let's take a look at some setups. So let's go. First of all, take a look at a hero here. And for those who may not be familiar, this is the combined signal for SPX and spy. And this is what you want to look at or what I look at whether I'm trading the S&P 500 futures, ES or SPX options or spy shares or options. This is the signal, the combined signal. Let me just get rid of this. That is that was the market polls. That's an excellent indicator confirmation that I have been using. And that's provided with book map. So let's take a look at the S&P 500. This is the total signal. And this combines all expirations, SPX and spy options and showing how options traders are approaching the day, what if they're taking positive or delta negative delta positions. And in the case of today, definitely overall negative delta quite by quite a bit. Other than here's the here's the open RTH open right around 930. The initial move was higher. And initially options traders were taking positive delta positions. And then they quickly turn that around. And notice how hero makes a series of lower highs and price does the same. And let's zoom in now and we can see that they're there was a good lead effect. So notice how hero starts to slope down even as price increases. So here was the first shorting opportunity. And then notice, you know, multiple short opportunities. This was the this one was more clear here as hero was clearly dropping and price was consolidating and then drop lower. Alright, so one thing to keep in mind, I can only present on one screen. But when I'm trading, I'm looking at multiple screens. So I'm looking at book map on one screen and hero on another. So I can see that both in real time. I know it's a little bit awkward here to look at one screen, and then the other and line up the time frames. But I, you know, I don't have to do that when I'm actually trading. I'm looking at two screens at the same time. Alright, so that is that's hero. And let's go out and take a look at book map again. So book map is showing the quick run up from 830 to right about right about 10am. And then we saw that hero had already shifted negative. And I talked about cumulative volume delta here shifting negative. And you can see all the pink dots, the market sell orders shown by these big pink dots. That's by minus sell. And if sell is there more sellers than buyers that it shows a pink dot and then multiple entries. And then finally, this has been confirmed by sell stop orders as well. Starting maybe about 11 really. That's the sloping yellow line. And you can see the sell stop orders. And notice the blue numbers to that those are iceberg orders large traders with their iceberg orders they use to hide their size have been fading this move all the way down. And that's shown by this long tool, this increasing blue line light blue line. And that's also shown by these blue numbers here. But it looks like the stop orders and the options traders and aggressive sellers are are winning so far. And now ES is down to the in SPX down to the 3950 SPX 3950 support level. Also the ES 3950 level. And then this LEM is the lower edge of the expected move for the week. So I thought this was a very clear setup for a short given the what just watching hero just waiting given in a few minutes watching hero watching the order flow and book map that I've just pointed out. And then one other confluence. Here's VIX. Let me zoom out just a little bit here. This is VIX for today. And notice the turn around about just after 10 a.m. VIX starts moving higher, making a series of higher lows. All right, let me let me check for questions in discord. Okay, it looks like looks like a conversation between JC and trader Pete. Alright, so I don't see anything from that conversation that I need to comment on. Alright, so let's take a look. And Pluto, I don't know what. What are you looking at here? What what instrument are you looking at? He's commenting on on hero. So I am looking at SPX. I'm looking at SPX. This is plus by right. So this is what I'm seeing. Alright, so if you're having an issue with with hero, you might want to want to contact spot gamma. Alright, let's take a look at some other setups. Yeah, just refresh try it. Okay, great. Alright, so let's take a look at some other setups here. And recall that AMD was was initially bullish, just based on the based on an increasing key gamma strike. And we'll notice notice in the morning here that this was was bullish, rising hero line. And let's go take a look at book map. We'll go to AMD. So there's the bullish move in the morning and then AMD finally gave in like, like the rest of the market and is moving lower. And notice the this is pretty typical for AMD the the order flow shown by all these pink dots here and you can you can see the the falling CVD can make AMD hard to read a CVD is falling a lot of the pink dots, even as prices increasing. And to me that just indicates the problem are the predominance of options traders hero driving price action. And then we can see the the strong correlation between options trades hedging for one price action and not so much with CVD on AMD like we like there usually is on the S&P 500. Alright, so that is that's AMD. And let's take a quick look at Amazon. And this was a another trade with AM confirmation that didn't last long. And let's go take a look at book map. There's Amazon strong rally in the morning. And then started to fade at the 96 level price passed through the 95 key gamma strike and the 94 hedgewall. And now continues lower. Let's go back and take a look at hero again. Not the the correlation between hedging flow and price action is not nearly as clear as AMD. Alright, the next one Google AM confirmation. And then there's a stronger correlation between options trades hedging flow and price action. Let's go take a look at at book map again. Take a look at Google sharp up movement the morning didn't last long. And then price has been moving lower. Again, both the key gamma strike and the hedge wall and play and notice the liquidity there at the 94 hedgewall than the liquidity at about 93 90 and was pulled. Alright, let's take a look at Microsoft and strong up trend this morning. Definitely confirmed by order flow cumulative volume delta. You can see all the all the green dots in here. Quick run up to the 259 level. And let's go take a look at hero. And this is one of the stronger cleaner signals for hero, especially in the morning. If you're looking for a trending stock, let's see what traders were doing. So they were selling puts and buying calls calls shown by the orange line rising calls rising orange line means that traders were buying calls and rising blue line means they were selling puts both are positive delta positions. Let's go back and take a look at book map. Let's zoom out so we can see again the strong correlation between hedging flow and price action. Go back to book map and just like everything else that reverse lower sometime mid morning to noon and now price may be heading back down to this 255 hedgewall level and the liquidity there. Let's just take a look at Nvidia. So again, remember Nvidia was the assumption was initially bullish. And I think I traded. I think JEC traded that. Yeah, JEC, I thought it would have been a Microsoft today. Given that strong correlation. But anyway, here's Nvidia and let's take a look at Hero for Nvidia and really confirming the downtrend. So remember my process. I have a thesis but I always confirm it with Hero and Hero and order flow. So Hero hedging flow options trades have been negative delta market makers are selling stock to hedge their delta exposure as traders sell calls and buy puts. So yeah, in Nvidia there was a short up move in the morning but the overall the trend has been down today. So that's Nvidia. Let's take a look at QQQ and the move in Hero this morning set up a down move and it looks like traders started fading the move lower about 11 a.m. and price continues lower. So pretty difficult to read here in QQQ. Let's go to Tesla and a couple of a couple of things I want to point out in Tesla. Let's go to let's go to equity hub and actually here while we're looking at AMD, I want to point out this is the history showing the history 10 day history for these spot gamma key daily levels and recall my quick look at the key gamma strike indicated that that key gamma strike increased for AMD and Nvidia. So if I wanted to do further research I would go in here to the to equity hub and see there's the increase in key the key gamma strike from yesterday to today. So it's been at 80 for quite a while increased to 85 also the increase in the hedgewall from 81 to 83 and then also the increase in the put wall I'm sorry the call wall from 85 to 90. So I take all of that as bullish. Alright so that's a look at AMD and we saw that initially there was a good bullish set up in AMD but it turned with the rest of the market. Now let's take a look at Tesla and we'll see a different story here. So notice Tesla and I think we talked I think I talked about this yesterday. The key gamma strike has been at 200 for quite a while traders have failed to move it higher so now it has finally dropped down to 180. So from 200 yesterday to 180 today and also the hedgewall shifted lower from 193 to 190 and then the put wall shifted lower and it has gradually shifted lower from 195 10 days ago to 170 today. So a gradual shift lower so all of that is definitely bearish for Tesla. Alright let's go take a look at hero now for Tesla and we could see that order flow is definitely I mean hedging flow is definitely confirming this move lower other than the initial move higher in the morning. Since then hedging flow has been setting up shorts all the way down. So traders are selling calls and buying puts. The following orange line shows that traders are selling calls and the falling blue line shows that they are buying puts and both are negative delta positions. So let's go take a look at book map. Take a look at Tesla. Alright so for Nvidia it looks like the 235 hedgewall high liquidity level is the next target below. Take a look at Tesla. There's the initial run up and then Tesla moving lower down to the past the 180 T gamma strike and again remember that drop down from 200 to 180 today. Move through that liquidity seller buyers absorb the sellers. It did a retest of the 180 level and now headed down to the 175 level. It looks like buyers are coming in and watch what options traders are doing. Let's go back to hero. Let's zoom in and if you're looking for another short opportunity you know I would look for this hero line to start to dip lower and also confirm that with order flow and book map. Let's just see if CVD provides any clues and CVD cumulative volume delta has been been negative all day and let's just do a quick check of the S&P 500. So so far this cluster of levels here this lower edge of the expected move ES 3950 and SPX 3950 so far holding as support. Alright so JEC notes a sharp hero increase in spy and let's go back and take a look at hero. Let's look at the S&P 500 spy and SPX. Yeah there's that sharp increase in hero so and this is pretty typical and what has been happening the last few days is traders are selling highs and buying lows options traders and often with zero DTE options. Let's just change this. We'll take a look at this is the next expiration only so you can see the zero DTE options traders came in just before 130 just before I started taking positive delta trades and then prices slowly responding and again this is pretty typical they will pick their levels and in the case today this was the this cluster of levels at ES 3950, SPX 3950 and then the lower edge of the expected move. So this looks like a big move but it's I guess in recent days it is somewhat about a maybe a 70 point move something like that. Let's see what was this high here just below 40-20 down to 3950 or so so about a 70 point move lower. Again almost doubling that move after the jobless claims and so far traders continue sell stops continue although the iceberg orders are in there iceberg large traders with their iceberg orders of buying but there's still plenty of sell stops fueling this move down to down to these levels. So if you're interested in trading this I would you know certainly watch hero let's go back to the total signal now so this is all explorations that we're looking at and it same thing is zero DTE let's take a look at both at the same time so here at this point it looks like zero DTE is dominating. Okay that's all I have for today my time is up interesting day and we saw some good setups and the ones that I liked especially were the S&P 500 and also Tesla. So anyway again thanks for your questions and comments thanks for watching and I will see you tomorrow and remember the employment report at 8 30 a.m. Eastern time and we'll talk about that tomorrow afternoon so thanks again and I will see you tomorrow.