 Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30pm Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the disclosures. 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. And JEC says YouTube and Discord audio sounds great. Had to be back this week, able to watch live, and I'm very glad you're here as well, welcome back again glad you're here. And thanks for the confirmation about the audio. The focus of my presentation and the focus of the Options-Doug chat channel and 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. Now look at how traders and market makers are positioned at 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 and book map and real-time market maker hedging flow in Spot Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And just to be clear, I am looking at the options market to develop a thesis and to help with setups. But the setups that I will be talking about, I'll be talking about the underlying, whether it is the S&P 500, ES futures or SPI or Tesla stock or NVIDIA stock. And those trades, again, I'm just talking about an underlying. You can take an underlying, you can take the trade any way you see fit, whether it's buying or selling an option or a spread or shares or futures. And questions and comments are welcome, and I'll be watching the Options-Doug chat channel and Discord and the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. All right, let's get started. My agenda for today, what I want to talk about is, first of all, news and economic data for the week. And there are some important numbers coming out and important events later on this week. And then I'll go through my positional analysis and then I'll talk about setups. All right, so first of all, news, economic data and events for this week starts on Wednesday. And here's tomorrow, April 11th, not really much of significance. It looks like a couple of Fed speakers after the market closes. And then tomorrow, the fund starts with the CPI report at 8.30 AM Eastern Time. And that has been a big market mover in the past. And then also on Wednesday, the FOMC minutes at 2 PM Eastern Time. And that has also been a big market mover, almost like the FOMC announcement itself. And I will be on live at that time. Again, I'm on from 1.30 to 2.30. So I will be on for a half an hour after the minutes come out. And we'll watch the S&P 500 at that time. And then on Thursday, the 13th, PPI data, again at 8.30 AM Eastern Time. And then finally, on Friday, there's retail sales reported at 8.30 AM Eastern Time. And then consumer sentiment, Michigan consumer sentiment at 10 AM. So all important events and economic data releases coming up later on this week. All right, let's start with the positional analysis now. And this is the S&P 500 futures in Bookmap. And before I dig into this chart, I'm going to take a look at a larger time frame just to set the stage. This is the SPX index showing just price and the key spot gamma levels. The key gamma levels provided to spot gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms. Here we're seeing thinkorswim. This is a 20-day one-hour chart. And let me just point out some of the key levels that are in play. Here's the put wall at 3,800. And it's been there for a while. That's the strike with the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. Here's the 4,000 level. And that is the key gamma strike or absolute gamma strike. The strike with the largest absolute gamma. And here's the volatility trigger at 40.55. And that is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level. Below that level, market maker's position on the gamma curve is negative. And they have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure in a negative gamma environment. And then above that level, like SPX is now, market maker's position on the gamma curve is positive. And they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue volatility. And we'll look at some other information that will help to clarify that. And then finally, up above at 4,200 is the call wall, the strike with the largest net positive gamma. That can be expected to act as resistance. And those are the key levels. And there are some other levels as well, like this zero gamma level that we'll see on the one day, one minute chart. And that is acted as support today. And now price is bumping up against the SPX 4,100 level. And that was expected to act as resistance today. That was noted as a resistance level in the SPOT gamma AM founders note. All right, so again, that is a one day, one minute chart, just a grind higher. And this is to be expected in a positive gamma environment, this type of price action. All right, let's take a look at the book map chart now. And I've got the same levels on this chart in a couple of columns. This is the SPOT gamma cloud notes. Again, these levels are provided to SPOT gamma subscribers for a variety of platforms. And here they're shown for book map. And this is showing a couple of key levels here. This is the 4,100 level. That is the L3 level, one being the most important for, it's a scale of one to five with one being the most important or most significant. And then there's the combo level, that is an SPX and SPY combination level converted to an equivalent SPX number and then converted to an equivalent ES number. And right now, SPOT gamma is using a 27 point difference between ES and SPX. And that's about what I calculated. 26 and a half, 27. There's the zero gamma level that has acted as support. And earlier in the day, the ES 4,100 level acted as support. And that's shown here in my cloud notes, this column right here. And I'm noting, again, the primary SPX levels, the ES levels, and also the key SPY levels. And I calculate the ratio of ES to SPY. And I fill out these numbers in a spreadsheet. So there's the 408 volatility trigger for SPY. So those are the levels that are in play for today. Again, a gradual grind up. And this is, again, typical of a positive gamma environment. All right, there were a few shifts in levels. First of all, for SPX, the volatility trigger shifted down from last week from Thursday from 4095 to 4055. And then for SPY, there were shifts higher. For the volatility trigger shifted higher from 406 to 408. Key gamma strikes shifted higher from 408 to 410. And the call wall shifted higher from 408 to 420. So I interpreted all of that as bullish. So again, given the positive gamma environment and the shifts higher in levels for SPY, my expectation for today was, again, a slow grind higher, which appears to be exactly what is happening so far. All right, so for QQQ, the volatility trigger shifted lower from 319 or 317 last Thursday to 315. And then the key gamma strike shifted higher from 315 to 320. All right, so those are the levels that are in play for today. And we'll take a closer look at ES, SPY in a few minutes when I talk about setups. All right, so let's take a closer look at the gamma levels now, and we can see where those levels come from. So first of all, this is the SPX. Let me just refresh this page to make sure we have current data for everything. So this chart, this live chart is current. And this chart in the upper right corner, I'm going to expand this, is showing the absolute gamma levels. And above the zero line, positive gamma or call gamma is shown with the orange bars. And below the zero line, negative gamma or put gamma is shown with the blue bars. And this is the 4000 strike. That's the absolute gamma strike. That's very obvious. Strike with the largest absolute gamma. And that can be expected to act as support, resistance, or a magnet for price. And then here is the 3800 put wall down here on the left edge of the chart. The strike with the largest net negative gamma can be expected to act as support. And then here's the call wall. Strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And note there is plenty of call gamma up here from 4100 to 4200. All right, so that's the SPX. Let's take a look at SPI. I'm going to zoom in on this and also zoom in even a little bit more. So for SPI, now the key gamma strike is at 410. Strike with the largest absolute gamma. And the put wall is at 400. That's pretty obvious. The strike with the largest net negative gamma. And here's the call wall at 420. The strike with the largest net positive gamma. So that's SPI and the key gamma levels. Let's take a look at QQQ now. And for the NASDAQ, I just look at QQQ. Looks like I need to refresh the page. All right, there's the gamma levels for QQQ. Oops, back to SPX. There we go. Zoom in. So for QQQ, the key gamma strike is now 320. And the put wall at 300. And then 320 is also the call wall. So there's the range of strikes 300 to 320. Most likely for QQQ. All right, so it looks like QQQ is heading up bumping or heading for that 320 call wall potentially. All right, let's take a look at the Vana charts now. And this will illustrate what I was just talking about, how market makers can be expected to react in a positive gamma environment and also a negative gamma environment if price drops. So what this is showing, there are two lines on this chart. This is the Vana model. Two lines. The first line is showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price. And that's delta notional shown on the vertical axis, strike price shown on the horizontal axis. And this light gray line is delta changes only. So it does not account for any changes in implied volatility. And what this is showing is as price increases, market makers delta notional will increase and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And again, that's typical in a positive gamma environment. And then on the other hand, as price decreases below, it looks like around the 4077, right at the zero gamma level, market makers delta notional will increase and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And that would be when the SPX flips over to a negative gamma environment. And then this pink line is showing how market makers delta notional will change with changes in implied volatility and price. So it's adding the Vana effect in there, the change in delta with the change in implied volatility. And that is showing that in the case of price rising, change in implied volatility is not going to have much impact. There's not going to be much Vana kicker for a price increase. On the other hand, there will be if price decreases, market makers will have to hedge more aggressively as price decreases due to the increase in implied volatility and the increase in their delta notional. All right, so that is SPX. And let's just take a look at the other indices. We won't go into the same detail again, but there's SPI, pretty similar, more steeper curve. Typically, gamma notional is a greater for SPI than SPX. And then there's QQQ, a little bit more similar to SPX. All right, let's take a look at data. We'll just do a check of gamma notional so we can see some numbers here. And this is showing gamma notional for SPX, SPI, NDX, and QQQ. So for SPX, and note all the numbers are positive. Again, indicating market makers position on the gamma curve for all these indices is positive. And in that case, that means that traders are short calls, market makers are long calls, hence the positive gamma, and they have to sell futures against price to hedge their delta exposure. And these numbers did shift down slightly from the end of last week. SPX shifted down from 3.9 billion to 3.8 billion. SPI shifted down from 9.2 billion to 7.2 billion. And then QQQ shifted down from 3.3 billion to 3 billion. So slight shift down, not quite as positive as last week, but still positive, still positive on the gamma curve. All right, let's take a look at, that's most of my preparation for the indices. So primarily looking, again, given the increase in the volatility trigger, call wall, and key gamma strike for the S&P 500, my directional bias was bullish and given the positive gamma environment. And what we just saw in the VANA model, that market makers will have to sell against price as price increases to hedge their delta exposure, looking for a lower volatility day. All right, so let's take a look at some stocks now. Let's go here so we can just see this part of it. So this is my key gamma strike list. I tracked the key gamma strike for the stocks on my watch list, and this is just a quick indication of sentiment for a stock. This key gamma strike, I'm looking at how traders are positioning themselves in the options market for all these stocks, and how those levels change from day to day to give an indication of a directional bias. And this is a mixed picture for today. So what I'm doing, I'm tracking the key gamma strike from last week. This is from last Thursday, and remember Friday was a holiday. And then the current key gamma strike is for today. And I color code these numbers. Green indicates the number increased from the previous day. And there you can see for spy and QQQ, the key gamma strike all increased from the previous day as well as Microsoft, Google. And then a red number indicates that the number decreased from the previous day like AMD and Apple there. So the key gamma strike dropped for those stocks. This is just an indication of a quick indication of how traders are positioning themselves in these stocks. And it generally leads me to do further research here in Equity Hub. And for example, if I wanted to do further research for Apple, I would look at the history of all the key daily levels and see how they've changed over time. So what this is showing is for Apple, and this is just an example. The key gamma strike dropped, and the put wall dropped, and the call wall increased. So a little bit of a mixed picture. Basically, when I interpret this, the put wall is expected to act as support. So an increased trading range for Apple. $150 on the downside and $170 on the upside. So the ceiling has moved higher, and the floor has moved lower, and the key gamma strike dropped down five points. All right, let's take a look at some setups. And again, there was basically this key gamma strike. There was a mixed picture. Some increases, some decrease. All right, so let's take a look now at some setups. I'm going to start with the S&P 500. And recently, I've been looking at SPX for a very clear signal for the S&P 500. And let's just take a look before I go into this any further. There's also SPI. So this is showing, for those of you who may not be familiar with this chart, this is showing options trades and market maker hedging activity. It's the spot gamma hero chart, H-I-R-O, that stands for hedging impact of real-time options. And the white line is price. The purple line is the hero line. And let's take a look at SPI. So that is SPX. Let's take a look at SPI. And a little bit more difficult to interpret here. Not a strong correlation. So that's why I've been looking at SPX. And then there's also the combined signal that combines both the S&P 500 and combines both SPX and SPI into one signal. And this is really the, I guess, the true signal. So for trading any form of the S&P 500, whether you're trading ES futures, SPI shares, SPI options, SPX options, this is probably the best signal to look at. Or SPX. That's what I've been looking at at both. So this S&P 500 combined signal or just SPX. And what this is showing, let me zoom in once more, this is showing since SPX options trade before the RTH open, this is showing information to the left, which is once after the RTH open, and that information to the left is not significant. So this is showing that traders are taking positive delta positions and that confirms my bullish thesis for the S&P 500 leading to good pullback setups. And we'll look at the ES futures and SPI in book map in just a minute. So bullish hero providing strong signal, bullish signal. And let's just see what exactly what traders were doing. And they're buying calls that show them by the rising orange line. And I'm getting these odd drops. Let me just clear this. I'm going to have to go to another symbol and then we'll go back to the S&P 500. What I was talking about is that vertical bar and I don't think that is something that's actually there. So let's go back now to the S&P 500. And what I wanted to take a look at is this is typical of the indices. SPX by QQQ, traders buying calls and buying puts. And really it's just a matter of seeing who's winning. So right now I'm looking at this notional value. That's positive 3.1 billion versus that's the call buyers versus the put buyers minus 651 million. So the call buyers are winning. All right, so let's go back to the combined signal there. And we get a combined signal of 2.47 billion. And let's also take a look at these zero DTE trades. And what this is showing is about 60% of the trade today is in zero DTE options. I'm comparing this green line with the purple line. The total popper line is showing all expirations. The green line is just showing the options that expire today. And remember both SPX and SPY have options that expire every day. So again it appears that the zero DTE options are driving about 60% of the options trade here in the S&P 500. Oops. Let's clean that up. All right, so let's go take a look at the charts now in BookMam. So here's the S&P 500 futures ES. And again I pointed out the support reversal hire early in the morning at ES4100. Then support at the 4077 zero gamma level a couple of times. And it took this final test of the 4077 zero gamma level for price to move higher. And note the shift in order flow. I'm going to zoom in. Note all the pink dots here. These are market sell orders by minus sell. Sell is dominating. Sell orders. And then note the shift in order flow at the zero gamma level to positive. Pink dots down, green dots rising, reversal at that level. And prices moved up to the 4100 SPX, 4100 resistance level. And seems to be chopping around there. All right, let's go back to hero. And I want to take a closer look at the reversal just after 12 o'clock. So here's that reversal. Just really a confirmation. Maybe a slight lead hire just by a few minutes. Hero starts to rise and then price follows just a minute or two later. So that reversal hire around 12 o'clock was a pretty easy read. Watching order flow and hedging flow at the same time. And I'm watching. I'm presenting on one chart here, but I'm typically watching two charts at the same time. I have hero on one screen and whatever instrument I'm trading and book map on the other screen. And let's just let's take a look at the SPX chart. Maybe that will give a little bit more of a leading signal and not really. So just a very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action in SPX and the S&P 500. And let's go take a look at spy now and note the reversal early in the morning. At the spy 406 level and that was very close to the ES 40. What was that? The ES 4100 level and actually let me draw that with just a trend line. So trend up this morning when I wanted right here we go trend line up this morning. The pullbacks to the trend line were close to the good long setups. First one at 10 o'clock, the first point, first check of the 406 level. Note the buy sweep, sell sweep, and then price jumps higher. And then a retest of the 4077 level. Test of VWAP. And then the sharp drop down reversal in the order flow just after 12 o'clock. And now price is trying to move above the 40100 level. Let's take a look at some other setups. And if anybody has any other stocks they want me to take a look at please let me know. And I'm going to go to AMD first. Very strong uptrend today in AMD. And recall from the key gamma strike list the key gamma strike was actually lower for AMD today. So sometimes that doesn't work out. That's why I say I always confirm my thesis with order flow and hedging flow. And this is clearly very bullish hedging flow. Oh up until about 11 o'clock when price hits the 94 hedgewall level. But what I'm talking about is all the green dots here. Very bullish order flow. Market buy orders. And let's take a look at hero for AMD. And initially traders were taking negative delta positions. And just around somewhere between 09.50 and 10 a.m. they turned around and joined the party. So they started selling puts and buying calls just around 10 a.m. and price continued higher. Let's go back and take a look at book map. So the initial confirmation was really just the bullish order flow and book map. A lot of market buy orders. Absorption at the 91 level. Test of VWAP. And price continues higher with a clear target at the 94 hedgewall level. And also at the 95 level. Liquidity there. And then 96 would be the next target. And I'm talking about this high liquidity shown in the book map heat map. And those are resting orders. Limit orders to sell. And that tends to attract price. All right, so that's AMD. And let's take a look at Nvidia. Go stick with the semiconductors here. Another strong uptrend. Let's take a look at hero. See what options traders were doing. So clearly bullish in AMD. There's Nvidia. Very similar. And this is pretty typical for Nvidia recently. About 30 minutes of chop in the morning. And then price starts to move higher. And super newbie asked how do you determine that those were resting sell orders as opposed to buy orders? If they're above price, they're sell orders. And if they're below price, they're buy orders. Those are limit orders. All right, so there's the chop area of Nvidia. And then once price gets beyond that, options traders start taking positive delta positions. And price increases. Let's go back to book map. I'm going to zoom in. All right, zoom in on the morning session. And there's the first 30 minutes of chop in Nvidia. Again, this is very typical. And then price finally starts to break out of that. Does a retest of VWAP here and then starts to move higher. And price targets above at the zero and the five levels. So the 270 and 275 level were the primary targets. And there's that liquidity that acts price by our seeking sellers at 270 and 275. All right, let's take a look at QQQ. And this is a very similar picture to the S&P 500. Move down a little bit of a chop, kind of a steady uptrend pullbacks. Then this break lower down to VWAP. And then price continues to move higher. Note the shift in order flow here, just like the ES futures. Various order flow pink dots. And then order flow shifts bullish at the reversal at VWAP. And note also the buy sweep here, or the sell sweep, I'm sorry. High volume at that reversal point of sell sweep down. And if we could see stop orders, that would probably be sell stops. Let's just take a look at NASDAQ and see if we can see any sell stops just after 12 o'clock. And there were some. I'm looking at this on-chart indicator for stops. And remember for NASDAQ, the NQ futures trade in sync with QQQ. So sell stop run down to this level. And the same shift in order flow as seen here in NASDAQ. Pink dots on the way down, market sell orders, aggressive buyers come in, and price moves higher. Alright, so Andre asked in YouTube, can you see a buy stop order above price and book map? And you can only see it after it is executed. As far as I know, there's no way of seeing a buy stop order before it's executed. So let's take a look at, and that information is shown for futures, for CME futures, using rhythmic data. Book map has an MBO bundle that includes the buy, the stop order indicator, as well as iceberg order indicator. And let's just take a look at a couple things here for the ES futures. First of all, I have two stop indicators. One is the sub-chart that's shown by this yellow line, and that's showing buy stop orders. The increasing yellow line is showing buy stop orders start to move this fuel to move higher. And you can see at the end of the move lower, sell stops, that's shown by this small red dot in the number 743, 743 contracts. Also shown by the dip in the yellow line there, the drop in the yellow line. And then the reversal at the zero gamma level, 4077, price starts to increase, and as price moves up, buy stop orders start. And these are pretty low numbers, whether it's 438, 130, and then buy stop orders and aggressive buyers are helping the fuel to move higher, as well as options traders. But in Bookmap you can't see these until after they have executed. All right, so those are the buy stop orders. And we were on QQQ. So QQQ continues to move higher. And let's take a look at Tesla now. So for Tesla there was an initial move lower. Now that doesn't help too much. The initial move higher was this is showing positive cumulative volume delta. And this just indicates to me that options traders are really driving price action in Tesla. So let's go take a look at Hero before we look at this chart in more detail. All right, so there's Nvidia. Oh, we forgot to look at QQQ. Let's go back to QQQ. So what I wanted to point out, and we'll go back and look at the QQQ chart again, this divergence. This is the best divergence setup for today. Note that Hero starts moving up from the open, price moves lower, and then responds higher, reverses higher. So when I see something like this, let's zoom way in on this. When I see something like this first thing in the morning or any time during the day, when I see Hero moving one way and price moving the other way, I'll go to the book map chart and start watching order flow and levels to look for a reversal higher. And this happens more often in the indices, the S&B 500 and NASDAQ. So here it is for QQQQ. So let's go back now to the QQQ chart, then we'll get to Tesla. Get back to Tesla. So there's QQQ and no clear level for the reversal higher, but there is a shift in order flow. I'm talking about this level right here. So probably the best entry point there was the first pullback, first higher low. So nice divergence setup in QQQ. Alright, let's go back to Tesla now. Let's go take a look at Hero for Tesla. And as usual with Tesla, there's a very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action. Zoom in on the morning and there's a confirmation of the quick move lower. If you'd like to trade the open, there it is. And then the move higher, chop, and then Hero confirms the move higher. The thing about Tesla, there's a divergence occasionally, but typically it's just more Hero provides a one-to-one confirmation with price action. Market makers are hedging options trades in Tesla immediately. So the way that works, if traders are buying calls or selling puts, market makers are taking the other side of the position and they have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure. Then on the other hand, if traders are selling calls and or buying puts, those are negative delta positions and market makers have to sell Tesla stock to hedge their delta exposure as they take the opposite side of the trades. Alright, let's go back to BookMap. So nice strong uptrend in Tesla and I think there was some negative news pre-market. Tesla was down pre-market, let's just see. Yeah, it was. Steady drop down, then a sharp drop right after the RTH opened and then aggressive buyers start to come in. Options traders taking positive delta positions and price moves higher. And have prices reached, let me just zoom back in and clear this up a little bit. Price quickly reached the 180 level, liquidity at that level and now has made it up to the, what I would consider a primary target at the 185 hedge wall and note the more significant liquidity at that level. So there's Tesla, nice strong uptrend. Let's see if I had any. Let's take a, if there are no questions, let's take a quick look at a couple of other stocks. Take a look at Apple and not really a lot to see here. We'll take a look at Hero, not a lot of range. That's fairly typical of Apple. But here's Hero, strong confirmation, strong correlation between hedging flow and price action. Let's go back and take a look at book map and note the reversal above the 160 key gamma strike and all the liquidity at that level. Looks like traders were front running that. All right, so that's Apple. Let's take a look at Meta. And in Hero there was a confirmation of this move lower, a breach of the put wall here at 212 and note for Meta that is a higher put wall, the put wall actually increased. So a higher floor for Meta price quickly drops below that level and finally starts to move higher. And after the move higher, it does act as support, both feewap and the put wall and price targets above at this 21370 level, all the liquidity at that level, a little bit at the 214 level, 215 and then 216. So let's just go take a look at Meta and Hero. So there was a, this is confirming the move lower and it looks like it took a while for the options traders to turn around. So not much of a lead effect after the morning drop until around just afternoon and let's see what traders are doing and they're buying calls. And that's shown by the orange line. And in the afternoon session that appears to have more impact on price or a stronger correlation. We'll just take a look at the total signal again. All right, that's Meta. In about another minute, we'll take a look at Microsoft. And there was a strong confirmation of the price drop this morning and then options traders really aren't doing much after that. Let's just take a look at book map, go to Microsoft. Sharp drop this morning, reversal at the 285, key gamma strike. Price is grinding higher. Very similar pattern to both the SPX, SPY, ES and QQQ. Pullbacks in an uptrend up until about noon this sharp drop, deeper pullback. Just afternoon and then price is grinding higher again. All right, that's it. That's all I have for today. My time is up. There were a few good setups today, but again, remember we're on a positive. The markets, SPX, SPY, ES, QQQ are all on a positive gamma environment looking for lower volatility, lower expected trading range for the day. All right, again, that's all I have. Thanks for your questions, comments, and I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Thanks for watching. Bye.