 Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 pm Eastern Time. Before I go any further, I need to go through the Disclosures. General Disclosure. All Bookmap, Limit, and Materials information and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. This Disclosure, creating 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. As a reminder, 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, 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 implied volatility or implied volatility and expected trading range for the day, as well as a directional bias. And the second step of my process is execution. And I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in SpotGamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. So planning and execution, and three main components to that. Positional analysis, real-time order flow, and real-time market maker hedging flow. And questions and comments are welcome, and I will be watching the options-doug chat channel and Discord and the chat and YouTube for questions and comments. And notice here I say on-topic questions and comments. So I want to just spend just a moment talking about this, first of all, about my process and why I want to keep this on topic. So I have found that I have, I found the greatest success and clarity and lack of confusion by keeping things simple and boiling down my process to really these three elements. Positional analysis, real-time order flow, and market maker hedging flow. And I have eliminated thinking about and looking at everything else. And this is just me. There are plenty of other traders that have used other forms of analysis, moving averages, chart patterns, volume profile, market profile. This is what I have found gives me the greatest success. And that is why I want to keep my presentation and this chat channel and Discord clear lack of confusion. So focus just on those things. Options order flow and the impact of options markets on stocks and futures. So again, this is where I have found the least confusion, the most clarity and the most success. So I want to keep my presentation and the chat and the questions and comments focused on these topics. Okay, so let's get started. And what I want to talk about today, first of all, I'm going to go through my agenda for today. First of all, talk about news, economic data events and earnings. And of course, we have a big event coming up in just a little over 20 minutes, the FOMC meeting minutes. And then we'll talk about our positional analysis and setups as we have time. And then at 2 p.m., when the FOMC minutes come out, we'll watch the S&P 500 futures. And we'll continue as long as that looks interesting. Okay, so the news, again today, FOMC minutes at 2 p.m. And then after the close today, NVIDIA earnings. And then tomorrow, the GDP report at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And then Moderna and Block also report earnings. And then Friday, the PCE data that comes out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And then consumer sentiment at 10 a.m. So the FOMC minutes today might provide some relief, some drop in volatility, but you might not expect much movement after the, I guess, some relief up or down, depending on how the market interprets the FOMC, given the additional data that's coming out for the rest of the week. All right, so that's the news. Now let's take a look at, look at our charts. So this is the S&P 500 futures in Bookmap. And before we dig into this, let's take a look at a larger time frame. So this is the SPX. And I'm looking at a 20-day one-hour chart in Thinkorswim. And I'm just showing price and levels. And these levels are Spot Gamma levels. They're provided to Spot Gamma subscribers every day in a ThinkScript for Thinkorswim. And you have to manually copy and paste that in every day. It just takes a couple of minutes. And it's showing the, again, just price and levels for SPX. Let me just point out quickly the couple of key levels. And here's the put wall at 3,900. And the key gamma strike at 4,000. And then the call wall way up there at 4,200. And then this shows the other levels in play, the volatility trigger, the zero gamma level. Let's clean that up. So the thing to notice is that SPX was trending up, broke that trend, traded in a consolidation area for most of last week, and then broke lower. And then now appears to have found support around the 4,000 level. All right. So that is the, that's a 20-day chart. Let's take a look at a closer time frame. And we'll just take a look at today in a one-minute chart, and again, just showing the key level. So this is a SPX, one-minute chart showing the levels that are in play. And so the, let me just actually scroll down on this and we'll see what's up above. So up above, actually there's no level shown here. There's the, here's the 40-50 level, look down here, 40-50. And spot gamma expected that level to act as resistance today. And it's not shown here, but that, that is the expected resistance for the day. All right. So that is the, the simple charts, SPX, the levels that are in play. Now let's go to book map, and we can see the levels on this chart as well. This is the column of, my column of spot gamma cloud notes. These are provided to spot gamma subscribers, and they're updated automatically. Right now, spot gamma is using a 10-point difference between SPX and SPI to paste these at the equivalent levels. That 10-point difference is a little bit high. The last time I looked, it was about seven and a half points. So this is showing the key SPX levels, like this L24000, that is the, that's the key gamma strike. And then this combo L4 level, which is a combination of SPX and SPI. And then I have another column of notes right here, these C levels. These are my cloud notes. And I'm showing things like the big round numbers for ES, that's ES4000. And then this is the, let me just zoom in so we can see this. This is the SPI 400 level, and that is the put wall and the key gamma strike. And then this other, this purple line, that's the lower edge of the expected move for the week. And that's based on the options market, and that's for the week. All right, so, you know, as this chart shows, the ES, SPX has been trading earlier in the day below the expected move for the week. All right, so that is the levels that are in play for today. And now let's talk about shifts in levels. There were a few. For first of all, the SPX and SPI volatility triggers both dropped SPX from 4055 to 4025. And then SPI just a minor drop from 406 to 405. And then more significantly, the SPI key gamma strike dropped down from 410 yesterday to 400 today. And then the QQQ, the volatility trigger, dropped. And also the put wall dropped from 298 to 285. And very strangely, you know, kind of a head scratcher. The call wall for QQQ increased from 310 to 360. And we'll look at the gamma level charts in just a minute. And we can see that, but it's, I guess, somewhat puzzling for the call wall to be up that high in out-of-play. All right, so let's take a look at the gamma charts now. And these are the absolute gamma charts. I'm going to scroll down. Okay, so this is the absolute gamma levels for SPX. And then we'll look at SPI. And what this is showing, this is the zero line, this horizontal line. And this is showing positive gamma or call gamma with the black lines above the zero line. And put gamma or negative gamma below. And so this is clearly showing the most gamma, both positive and negative, at the 4,000 level. And that's the absolute gamma strike or the key gamma strike, the strike with the largest absolute gamma. And then for SPX, the put wall is down below at 3,900. And that's the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And that can be expected to act as support. And then the call wall is way up here at 4,200. And we saw that on the thinkorswim chart. And that is the strike with the largest net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. So I think the thing to note here is the diminished call gamma above the 4,000 level. And somewhat of a build of put gamma below. And what spot gamma was calling for today, they were calling for this 4,000 level to be a pivot. And if this level holds, then looking for SPX to move up potentially to 40, 50 today. And then because, again, the data coming out later on the week, that may be the upper end until the rest of the data comes out this week. So that's SPX, the key gamma levels or absolute gamma levels. Let's take a look at SPI, zoom in on this. So again, remember the key gamma strike now has dropped down to 400. And that's pretty obvious. The strike with the largest absolute gamma. And that is also the put wall, the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And again, that's pretty obvious. And the thing to note here. Again, the diminished call gamma above that level. And the build input gamma below. And let me just show one other thing. This pop out, spot gamma, this is part of the spot gamma subscription. And I use this every day to fill out my. I, for my cloud levels, that sea levels column, I look at. I look at this information for SPI, for example. And I fill out this information on my spreadsheet. And that appears on my SPI chart and book map. And the interesting thing to note here was the shift in levels from yesterday to day. Now I don't have the pop out or screenshot from the pop out yesterday. But I had to delete a bunch of levels in my spreadsheet above this level and then fill out these levels below. And this is a really big shift from yesterday is all the build of put gamma below. And I'll talk about the consequence of that in just a minute. All right. One other thing to point out is the this chart of open interest and volume. And it may be a little bit difficult to see. And this is put data and we'll just stick with that. And this is SPX. The black bars are volume and the small teal bars here. You can barely see it are the open interest change. So the volume is the options that were traded during the day and open interest. That would be options that are held overnight. So that would be longer than zero DTE options. And this shows the, you know, the vast difference in volume. So just pointing out that price action yesterday was largely driven by these zero DTE options. And let's take a look at spy and it should be a bit, it's a little bit easier to see here. And this is noting, notes shows also the amount of volume traded at 400 for spy. And again, the volume dwarfs the open interest. So spy 400. That is the center, the focus of the volume for zero DTE option yesterday. And then for SPX, 4,000. All right, I'm going to skip over the NASDAQ charts and let's go straight to the. Well, we'll take a quick look. So here's the, here's the QQQ, QQQ, the key gamma strike at 300 put wall. And that's pretty obvious at 285. So it's dropped down from 290 to 285. And again, that's the strike with the largest net negative gamma. And then there's that 360 call wall oddity. So that is the QQQ. And again, I think the notable thing here is the build of put gamma below the 300 level. All right, let's take a look at the VANA charts. And this is just a graphical illustration of actually, but before we do that, let's look at data. And then we'll, we'll take a look at the VANA charts. So the data that I normally focus on is the gamma notional. And this is market makers position on the gamma curve. And SPX is shown on the left column, spy in the middle column and QQQ in the far right column. So SPX, gamma notional, this is market makers position on the gamma curve. Just looking at SPX is negative 636. So that means that traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to sell futures as price decreases to hedge their delta exposure. And as price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short hedges. And spy the same thing minus 2057. So that's getting into a pretty significant negative gamma. So again, market makers are long, traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and they will be trading in the direction of price to hedge their delta exposure in a negative gamma environment. And this tends to increase volatility. So these levels did shift from yesterday and became more negative. So gamma notional yesterday for SPX was minus 82. Today, again, it's minus 637. Yesterday, gamma notional for spy was minus 1304. And today, again, it's minus 2057. And then strangely, more odd data for QQQ. Yesterday, gamma notional was minus 377. And it became less negative today to minus 988. So I focused primarily on the S&P 500 anyway. So that is the data for gamma notional. So we know that there is a significant amount of gamma notional, negative gamma notional for SPX and spy. So while we have a couple of minutes left before the data, the minutes come out, let's take a look at the vantage arts. So this is SPX and this illustrates what I was just talking about. This vertical axis is showing market makers delta notional and the horizontal axis is showing strike price. And this is showing that as price decreases, market makers delta notional increases. And that means, again, they have to sell futures as price decreases to hedge their delta exposure. And the green curve is showing how that delta notional changes with, again, as price changes as well as changes in implied volatility. And that is the VANA effect, the change in delta with a change in implied volatility. And we can see how that has changed from day to day. So this is last Friday, yesterday and today. Notice the sharp increase in the slope of this line here. Now let's take a look at spy and that, again, remember, gamma notional is minus over minus 2,000. So that is a very steep, steep line here. All right, so that's spy SPX. And so, last thing that I want to take a look at, this is my key gamma strike list for today. And I cracked the key gamma strike for the previous day and the current day and color code them green or red, indicating whether the key gamma strike increased or decreased. And notice today there was not much of a change. The only significant change really was in spy here from 410 to 400. So that was the only significant drop in key gamma strike. So given all this, my thesis for the day was to wait for data, to watch. The key is to watch implied volatility, order flow, and hedging flow. So for setups this morning, I was just watching order flow and hedging flow. And there were some good short and long setups this morning. And depending on what the S&P 500 does, if we have time, if it's a nothing burger, then we'll go look at some setups. I probably will anyway. I'm not going to spend 30 minutes watching ES. So anyway, the key for today after the data comes out is to watch for the change in implied volatility and watch fix. That's an easy way to do that. So remember this negative gamma, the Vanna chart, that line works two ways. So if the market interprets the FOMC minutes as dovish or not as bad as expected or better than expected, however they interpret, if price increases and volatility decreases, then that will help fuel a Vanna rally. And that could, given the large amount of SPX by negative gamma, that could help to fuel a rally higher up to potentially 40-50 before the market starts to take into consideration the additional data coming out this week. And then on the other hand, if price drops implied volatility increases, this could create what spot gamma calls a negative gamma Vanna loop, where all that put, we saw all that put gamma down below. As those puts gain value, they get closer to end the money. Market makers will need to aggressively sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. Remember the market makers are short puts, that's a positive delta position. All right, so I've got minutes coming out right now, and there's a question in YouTube, does that mean that huge market pullback is coming? I'm not quite sure what exactly that is referring to, but I just talked about my thesis for today. It all depends on the data today and how the market interprets that data, and then also how we'll look at changes that implied volatility, price action, and make a determination from there. So I've kind of laid out the the thesis for today with what spot gamma was calling an upper bound at about 40, 50, and 4,000 being the pivot level. So this is the 4,000 level being the pivot level. And much below that level, that could kick off that negative gamma Vanna loop is those puts. And we saw all the puts down below, how they could, again, all those puts down below spy 400, SPX 4,000, they'll quickly gain value as implied volatility increases and price drops, and market makers will have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. So again, remember that negative gamma works both ways. So just want to point out one thing, the so the FOMC minutes come out three weeks after the meeting, the announcement, the meeting. And since then, there has been quite a bit of data that has come out. First of all, the employment situation for January, that was first Friday and in February. And so that came out after the the announcement in the meeting. So, you know, again, these minutes were created on February 1st. And then so the employment situation came out after that. The CPI report on the 14th after that retail sales after that, PPI after that. So there again, there's been a quite a bit of data that has come out after after that announcement, or the the FOMC meeting again, where these minutes were created. Let's just take a look at VIX and see what VIX is doing. So initially, we'll see what options traders are doing. We'll go take a look at hero. And I'm going to go take a list and just take a look at this SPX plus SPI combined signal. And first of all, let's take a look at the total signal. So this combined SPI and SPX put and call transactions. And it looks like overall traders were taking negative delta positions starting around 11 am up into as price was increasing up to the time of the meeting. And let's see what they were doing. So they were buying puts and buying calls. And this has happened quite a bit recently. Let's change this. Let's go back to the total signal and change to a smaller a shorter look back period change from the looking at the full day of data to just the last 30 minutes of data. We'll zoom in on this. So this is pretty choppy, but overall, it looks like a bullish reaction to the data traders taking positive delta positions, at least so far, going into the data. Let's go back to book map. Okay. What is what does everybody want to do? Do you want to look at setups from this morning or continue to watch the S&P 500? You know, just let me have some feedback and discord in YouTube. Okay, JC says check back in on the SPI after some setups. So that's a that's a good idea. And what I want to talk about that there were there were some good good setups this morning, both long and short. And I'm going to go through a couple that I were I was watching. And then we will go come back check on the S&P 500. And then we'll go through the rest of the setups. So first of all, what I was watching this morning, I was watching Tesla. And I've got a couple of screenshots here. And I was I first of all, I came in a little bit late, I had a meeting this morning. So my preparation was running a little bit late. So I was watching Tesla this morning, looking for a short looking at this trend break here. And looking for a short setup. And then I saw this jump in in hero, the purple line there that jump up and then it then hero leveled off made, you know, slightly lower highs. But as price was dropping, and that, you know, I thought that was a little bit confusing. And yeah, JC says he has a question. Yeah, I saw that. And I'll we'll talk about Tesla and more detail. Yeah, we'll look at Tesla closer. So anyway, this is what I saw this morning. It wasn't a strong you know, if the hero line had continued down. For me, it would have been easy short. But looking at the total line, this jump in the total line, you know, I didn't like what I saw. So I quickly started looking through my watch list. And give remember, my thesis for this morning was just to look at order flow and price action and make a decision based on the on the data that I saw. So yeah, that was, I don't know if it was hype, but just kind of a false signal. But anyway, I didn't see the clarity that I was looking for in Tesla. So I went and looked at at Amazon and saw much more clarity here. Saw this very clear divergence between hero and price action. And so that is the, you know, to me, that was a much more, much more clear trade. All right, so let's go take a look at book map. Now we'll look at Amazon and then we'll go to Tesla and dig in on Tesla. So that was the, that was Amazon. And you know, the matter, so the way I treat this, once I see this divergence, then I go to book map and let's go to Amazon. And I look for signals and order flow of a reversal. So I'm going to zoom in just on this area just the just the morning. And so this is what I saw in Amazon. So again, remember the the divergence, bearish divergence in hero, this absorption price sweep and absorption, right at the 97 liquidity, then the trend break. And price starts to move lower, a couple of entry points at the trend break or around this 9650 level. And then a couple of actually three targets, but a little a little bit of liquidity at the 96 level, and then clear liquidity target at the 9550 level. And then the final liquidity target at the 95 hedgewall level. And also the bearish order flow here. And especially all these pink dots, whoops, right in this area. So I saw that. And so that was my setup. And then when I got back to Tesla, it already moved too far. I didn't want to chase it. So anyway, that's what I saw this morning. Now let's go take a look at Tesla. All right, so there are some questions. All right, so JTT in YouTube is JEC, is that correct? Same person? Okay. All right, so I'll get to Tesla. There is a question. When I see a setup in Amazon, I do I trade stock or options. And I trade stock, I trade shares. That doesn't mean that that's what's what's best for you, or that's just me. And I was I was trained as a an option premium seller. And I just find it nearly impossible to buy an option. Again, that's just me. So I, you know, I just prefer to trade shares, I can be more precise with my entries. And you know, their advantages to options too, I guess you can, you know, just buy a, you know, buy a put buy a call, not worry about it, let it play out. But anyway, I so far I have been trading shares. All right, so here's Tesla. And let's take a look at at hero. All right, so now it looks like SPX by ES is moving lower. Let's go take a look at Tesla. And I believe the question from JEC was from early this morning 945 to 10am. And looking at I'm going to zoom in more. So looking at traders buying puts and buying calls. So let me just go. All right, so what this tells me is, you know, just that that traders were buying calls and buying puts. And, you know, just seeing this, that's, you know, definitely a conflict in data. And it, you know, clearly turns out that the puts were driving driving price action. And like I said this morning, I was running late. And I was just looking at the total signal and saw this, I think this is that, that little bump up that I was looking at in the total signal. And notice here that, you know, watching this a little bit further out, this call signal levels off and starts to drop after that bump up. So if you miss the initial long, you could, you know, go with the put buyers here for a short setup. And notice that this time, you know, if we've zoomed out to about 1015, that this number, this notional value 64 is almost twice the notional value minus 64, twice the notional value of positive 35. Okay, I hope that answers your question. And, you know, like I, like I said, I'm looking for clarity. Let's go back and let's take a look at book map. And let me just see if I can find something a chart from Tesla from yesterday. This is Tesla yesterday. This was just a clear short. Look at all of the, look at all the pink dots, the aggressive sellers coming in here at, you know, from just like 945 on and the falling CVD all day clear target at the, at this 200 T gamma strike level. And again, all the pink dots in here that, you know, some green dots and the quick run up to 209. And then the reversal lower, you know, definitely confirmed by order flow. So that is yesterday. And you know, just a huge confirmation from order flow of a bearish setup. But today that clarity was not there. You know, this is, let me do that over again. I'm just going to zoom in, zoom in with this tool. So notice here, the CVD was just slightly, slightly bearish, nothing like the clarity yesterday that's straight line down all day and not a clear shift from green dots to pink dots. So today, you know, again, I moved on. I didn't see the clarity that I was looking for in Tesla. So I moved on to Amazon and saw you know, saw more clarity, especially with the hero divergence. So let's go back and look at Amazon. And then we'll go back and check on the S&P 500. So Amazon, let's zoom back. And this was, again, more clear to me, the absorption at the 97 level and slightly more negative CVD, especially from this level on clear targets below. So I just thought this was more clear. This is one I saw. So this is what I took when I didn't see the clarity that I was looking for in Tesla. So that's why I have all these different stocks up here, you know, two futures contracts, all these stocks, you know, I can just I'm not stuck, not married to one, one symbol, I'm looking for the, you know, the easiest, most clear setup that I can find. So I hope that answers your question. All right, so let's go back and take a look at the S&P 500 now, and more chop. Looks like price is making, making lower highs, now making lower lows, but still around that spy 400 SPX 4000 pivot level. So yeah, we'll see if this, we'll see if this 4000 level holds. And it looks like the volume is really concentrated about the spy 4000 level, and then a little bit below the SPX 4000 level, which really is about actually the the SPX 4000 level is probably about 4000, 4,007, 4008. So that you know, this concentration of volume here could be just around the SPX 4000 level. All right, so Panamette, Panamette asks, what is your settings on the bubbles? So I assume you mean the volume dots, and there's really not, I just have the default. So I have the 3d bubbles volume, so this is delta volume delta, so by minus cell, and the size I change as, as required, with the slider up here, smart clustering. So again, this is pretty close to, pretty close to the defaults. The only thing that I've done really is change the colors. And I just picked something that I thought provided more clarity for the cell circles. This pink, I think stands out visually more than the default kind of orangeish red, brownish, you know, whatever the color default color is, this stands out more clearly from the heat map. So that's why I changed the color of the cell dots. All right, I've got a couple minutes left. Let's take a look at some other setups. I'm just going to run through this really quickly. There's Apple. That was a short and long confirmation. Let's go back and look at Hero, Apple, and really more of a long confirmation here, somewhat of a divergence, around 1015, 1031, everything else started to move up. AMD, divergence long and short. Let's zoom in on that. There's the divergence short, and then Hero starts to rise, and price restorns later. And Google, short, divergence, and long. Notice Hero dropping here as price chops, then moves lower, and then Hero moves up and price responds. And let's go take a look, let's take a look at that in book map. And not a lot of range in Google. There usually is not much range. And notice the, this reversal was pretty clearly shown in with order flow. First of all, this is the 91, whoops, let me get my pen tool, that'll be better. So this reversal was at the 91 hedge wall. And you'll notice the buy sweep, these small, bright green dots, and then the larger green dots, the buyers coming in at that 91 hedge wall. And then a quick move higher up to 92. So nice long set up there in Google. And let's take a look at Meta. And in Meta, I saw a divergence long and short, I believe. Let's go take a look at Hero for Meta. You can see that Hero's trending down, price responds a few minutes later, then Hero starts to move up, and price responds a few minutes later. So divergence long and short set up. And Microsoft, there was a divergence long, with Hero trending up, pretty much from the open. And then price responds a little bit later. We'll go take a look at Bookmap. So there's Meta. And I think this reversal was a little bit sloppy, but you could just tell and wait for it in Bookmap. See the buy sweep, the sell sweep, buy sweep again, and then price finally moves higher. And you have the confirmation again of a rising Hero traders taking positive, positive Delta positions. Here's Microsoft. And again, remember that divergence long, not a lot of range. Take a look at Nvidia. Let's go take a look at at Hero for Nvidia. And remember, Nvidia reports earnings after the close today. So this, we'll just zoom in here. This was the best set up in Nvidia. This confirmation short. Let's just see what traders were doing. So you can see that they were buying puts from the open, and then they started selling calls and price moved lower. And let's go take a look at Bookmap again. So there's Nvidia. There's the short set up with pretty clear liquidity targets at 207 and then the prime target at 205. And that is the 205 hedgewall. All right, let's do a final check on the S&P 500. And then we'll we'll call it a day. All right, so now the S&P 500 has broken below the spy 400 put wall key gamma strike, as well as the SPX 4000 level. Let's just take a look at this longer timeframe chart and think or swim. So the next level down below is the 3950 level. We'll take a look at the one minute chart. So it looks like the low of the day is around 3983. So that's what the S&P 500 is doing right now. Let's just do a final check with the VIX. And now VIX is rising. Looks like it's making higher highs. All right, so I'm going to wrap it up with that. Call it a day. Again, remember that we've got more data coming out this week. The GDP tomorrow and then the PCE on Friday and also consumer sentiment and Nvidia reports after the close today. So thank you very much. For watching. Thanks for your questions and comments. And I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye.