 Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug. Streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the Disclosures. General Disclosure, all Bookmap Limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Risk Disclosure, trading futures, equities, and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. 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 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 Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow and Spot Gamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And questions and comments are welcome and I'll be watching for questions and comments in the Options-Doug chat channel in Discord and the chat in YouTube as well. All right, let's get started. So today the things that I want to cover first, the news, economic data events and earnings this week, then we'll go through our positional analysis and finally we'll talk about some setups and there were some outstanding setups today. All right, so first of all, news items. So today the GDP report came out and also the preliminary PCE. So that's today and the numbers, it looks like the GDP came in less than forecast, a little bit lower than forecast and lower than the previous number. And then this PCE preliminary number looks like it was greater than forecast. So that's the data that came out this morning and the market really didn't have much reaction to that and we'll see that when we take a look at the charts in just a minute. And then also today there are two stocks, minor stocks on my watch list that report earnings, Moderna and Block. And then tomorrow there's another big data drop. That's the, I guess the final PCE, the PCE at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time and then consumer sentiment at 10 a.m. So that's the remaining earnings and news for the rest of the week. All right, let's take a look at our positional analysis now. Let's go back and let's start with the S&P 500 futures. So here is the movement around the data release at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. So not much movement initially. A little bit of a move down to the 400, this is the SPY 400 key gamma strike and then price, reverse lower at the SPX volatility trigger. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. So let's start before we dig into this chart any further. Let's take a look at a big picture view. And this is the SPX 20 day chart. And this is just SPX, just price and spot gamma levels. And these levels are provided to spot gamma subscribers. These are the key gamma levels provided to spot gamma subscribers in a think script. And this is showing the key levels. I'll just point out some of the primary levels. Here's the 3,900 foot wall. Again, this is SPX, the 4,000 key gamma strike and the call wall way up here at 4,200 out of play. So those are the main levels, the upper lower and upper end bound of the, you know, I guess any potential range. So that is the 20 day chart. And now, you know, just a big picture, SPX was in an uptrend last week, consolidated between all around 4,100 to 4,150 and then has started to trend lower. All right, let's take a look now at a one minute chart. Again, this is the pretty much the same SPX chart, just looking at a one minute time frame. So this is just today. And here, here again is the reversal at the volatility trigger. And that is spot gamma's proprietary gamma flip level with positive gamma market makers position on the gamma curve is positive above and negative below. So now SPX is trading in a negative gamma range here. And that means that market makers, traders are long puts market makers are short puts, and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure is price drops. So that's the that doesn't show all exactly all the levels today. Right, so that is the SPX one minute chart. Now let's go back to book map. Right, so here's book map. And these levels that I'm looking at, I have two columns of levels. And the first is the spot gamma cloud nodes, these are provided to spot gamma subscribers. These are updated automatically. And this is showing key SPX levels. There's the volatility trigger. And there's the 4,000 key gamma strike, again, SPX levels. And these levels are a little bit off on this chart. What spot gamma does is they calculate the difference between ES and SPX. And they're using right now a difference of 10 points. And the difference really is closer to about six points now. So these levels should be around four points lower. Okay, so those are the the levels in place shown with the spot gamma cloud nodes. So, you know, we just saw in the SPX chart that the SPX actually exceeded or went slightly above the volatility trigger. And then SPX has broken below the ES, SPX has broken below the 4,000 level and went down below this 3976 level. All right, there are a couple of comments, questions in discord. First of all, Persian line, please keep your comments on topic. And volume profile, any kind of point of control is really not on topic in this channel. Okay, and there's another question for ES. Well, what this is showing that way, you know, we just looked at the SPX chart in thinkorswim, and then this is the ES chart. And there is a difference between ES and an SPX. And I'm calculating a difference of around six points. Spot gamma is using a difference of 10 points. So this, you know, if it is six points, this level should be at around 4,006 for so SPX 4,000 should be somewhere down around this level. Okay, so JC is saying it's eight points. So it's somewhere between five and 10. So the numbers off a little bit not not significant. So anyway, that is, this is the S&P 500 futures. And there are a couple of things to note beyond the levels. First of all, the bearish order flow. Notice the shift here, especially around here as price moves up just above the volatility trigger, a lot of aggressive sellers come in, see all the pink dots there, aggressive sellers with their market sell orders, brief pause at this 40 20 resistance level. And then that then the price continues lower. Again, with aggressive sellers. So this is shown on the subchart here with the falling CVD line, that's the dark blue to pink line. And also this yellow line, those are sell stop orders. And those are also shown on the on chart indicator that small red dot 2038. Those are sell stop orders. In terms of contracts, helping to push price lower. Alright, so that's the S&P 500. It looks like it has found support somewhere around this 39 ES 39 75 level. So that would be somewhere between, let's say around 39 65 to 70. Alright, that's the S&P 500. Those are the levels that are in play. So again, the reversal at the volatility trigger, and then the move below the 4000 level, those in the 400 spy 400 key gamma strike. So I forgot to mention them. What I'm looking at here, these are my cloud notes. And I'm marking the key spy level. So that's the spy 4000 key gamma strike. And that level is pretty close to accurate. I calculated the ratio today. And that's also the lower edge of the expected move for ES for the week. And that's based on the options market. And then this is the ES 4000 round number level. And then I'm also noting the support and resistance levels that were noted in the spot gamma AM founders note. And I'm using their 10 point difference there. So that level should be a little bit lower. You know, maybe around here. And I will take a look at my spy chart in just a minute. And I have had those levels marked more accurately on the on my spy chart. Alright, so shifts and levels, let's talk about shifts and levels. And there were very few SPX, the key levels all remain the same volatility trigger put wall call wall key gamma strike. And then for spy, the only shift major major shift was the put wall that shifted down from 400 yesterday to 390 today. And then for QQQ, the put wall shifted up from 285 to 290. And then the call wall shifted down from that way out of range, 360 down to a more rational 310 level. Alright, so there's a question in in YouTube spot gamma are spot gamma levels provided for stocks. They have listed or just for the indices and is right now just for the indices. And that is one of the feature requests that I've sent to spot gamma to add spot gamma levels at least to their like their hero stocks, the stocks that are included with the the hero indicator. So hopefully they'll do that. But for right now, as far as I know, it's just just the indices. Alright, so we were talking about shifts and levels. And let's take a look at the gamma charts now. These are the absolute gamma levels. So this will show where those where these levels come from. So this chart is showing the absolute gamma levels. This is the zero line, this horizontal line with positive gamma or call gamma above the zero line shown by the black bars and a negative gamma or put gamma shown below with the teal bars. And you can clearly see that the 4000 level is the key gamma strike or the absolute gamma strike. And that's the strike with the largest absolute gamma. There's the put wall at 3900. 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 4200. That's the strike with the largest absolute positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And I think the key takeaway here is the range with the gamma concentration is 3900 to 4100 for SPX. Let's take a look at spy. I'm going to zoom in on this a bit. And for spy, 390 now is the put wall. 400 is the key gamma strike. And 420 is the call wall. And the thing to note here is the call gamma above the 400 level and put gamma below that level. And the range is pretty similar to SPX, 390 to 410 for the range of the significant amount of gamma. All right, that's SPX. Let's take a quick look at the NASDAQ now. Zoom in a bit here. So for QQQ, 290 is the put wall. 300 is the key gamma strike. And then 310 is the call wall. And the thing to note here is the significant amount of put gamma down below 300 level. And again, that's put gamma or negative gamma. So that would be, again, market makers position. Let's take a look at data now. And as usual, I'm going to focus on gamma notional. This is market makers position on the gamma curve. And this is SPX in the left column, spy in the middle column, and QQQ in the right column. So notice all these numbers are negative. And for all these, that means that market makers position on the curve is negative, negative gamma notional. And that means for all these indices that traders along puts, market makers are short puts, and they have to sell futures as price drops. And that works the other way around. As price increases and implied volatility drops, they can buy back their short hedges. So for SPX and spy, they're typically hedging with ES futures. And for QQQ, it could be the ETF itself or NQ NASDAQ futures. And most likely NQ futures is how they're hedging options trades and QQQ. All right. So the shifts in gamma notional for SPX, it was a slight shift to less negative. So yesterday, market makers gamma notional for SPX was minus 637. And today it's minus 606. So a slight shift less negative. And for spy, it was a slight shift to more negative from minus 2057 yesterday to minus 2116 today. And then the numbers for QQQ have been a little bit wonky this week. So yesterday gamma notional was minus 98. And today it has shifted all the way to minus 714. So anyway, again, negative gamma notional for all all indices. And now let's take a look at take a look at the Vantage charts, which are a graphical illustration of what I was just talking about. So this is the Vantage chart for SPX. And what this is showing is market makers delta notional or delta exposure on the vertical axis and price on the horizontal axis. And this is showing how market makers delta notional will change with changes in price. And also the green line shows the change in delta notional as implied volatility changes. And that is the Vanna effect, the change in delta with a change in implied volatility. And this is showing that market makers delta notional will increase as price drops. And again, they have to sell futures. They want to remain delta neutral. We can take a look at how this is shifted from day to day. So just a minor, minor shift from yesterday to today. Here's SPI and a minor shift from yesterday to today. And then there's QQQ. So all again, market makers position in all these indices is negative, negative gamma. And that does tend to increase volatility since market makers have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. All right. So one other thing that I typically look at. I look at changes in the key gamma strike for all the stocks on my watch list. So the far right column, the previous key gamma strike is the key gamma strike from yesterday. And then this D column, the current key gamma strike is the key gamma strike for today. And I note the change from day to day. And I color code that. So red indicates that the key gamma strike dropped from the previous day. And then green, if there were any green numbers here, that would indicate that the key gamma strike increased from the previous day. Okay. So this, this spreadsheet, this is neutral. And, you know, it's hard to, yeah, that's right. It isn't Christmas colors. It's, you know, based on this and based on the lack of shifts in levels in the indices, yes, you know, other than, you know, I guess minor shifts up and down and QQQ and the shift down on the put wall for spy, SPX, there were no shifts in the levels. So based on that information, my thesis for the day was neutral. And I want to take a look at something else. So let's go back to the these gamma level SPX or S&P 500 various charts, gamma levels. And I'm going to scroll down here to the bottom. And this is the open interest and volume adjustments. Let's see if I can zoom in on this. So what this is showing is the volume traded in the black bars. And the small teal bars are the open interest change. So the open interest, these in the open interest change would be positions that are held overnight at least, you know, they could, they're longer term than zero DTE. So they could be one day or, you know, more. So notice the stark difference between the size of the black bars and the size of the teal bars. So that indicates that the vast amount of volume yesterday, and we're looking at put data for SPX, you know, the huge amount of volume yesterday was all in zero DTE trades. So that could be an explanation of why there were no shifts in levels, because this, these zero DTE trades, they're gone at the end of the day. And a lot of the information that spot gamma uses is based on open interest. And that's updated once daily sometime during the night. So this is, you know, a good explanation. And I'll look at this more. I posted an interesting SPX hero chart and discord this morning, showing the strong correlation between zero DTE trades in SPX and price action. And we'll take a closer look at that when we start to look at setups in just a moment. So that's put data for SPX. Again, remember the large difference in the zero DTE volume versus the change in zero in open interest. Here's spy. Same thing. Huge volume. And here at the 398 strike, really the 397 to the 400 strike. That's where the volume is. And, you know, the open interest change is puny compared to the zero DTE volume. And here for SPX, the volume. And again, we're looking at put data concentrated in the 3950 and the 4000 level. Okay, with that, let's take a take a look at some setups. And I'm going to look at the S&P 500 first. And this is the SPX. And these lines are showing the zero DTE trades today. The green line is showing calls. And the this light blue, purplish kind of line here down below is showing puts. So right now, traders are buying puts and they're buying calls as well. But puts seem to be partially driving price action. Zero DTE puts and SPX seem to be a large driver of price action in the S&P 500 today. Let's just zoom in, especially on the morning. And that becomes more clear. And this is what I was looking at this morning. This falling line whereas the the call line is pretty much flat. And looking at the notional value here, 308, 309 versus 53. And let's just let's take a look at the total line there. Let me zoom back. So from 9, 930 from the cash open, until almost noon, that was a clear driver of price action in the S&P 500. And again, remember, we let's take a look at the book map chart now for for ES. We were looking at the bearish order flow as well, all the pink dots in there, the market sell orders, stop orders, all driving price down to the support level and below. So all very clear indications, both in order flow here and book map, and in hedging flow, looking, you just have to look at the right thing and understand what traders are doing. And, you know, especially with the S&P 500, it takes a little bit of digging, looking at spy, looking at SPX and seeing what is really driving. And, you know, again, we showed the huge volume yesterday compared to the small open interest. And, you know, I think it's, you know, we just saw with the chart that that appears to be what is happening today as well. And there's another way to check that. We can take a look at, well, we'll just leave it at that. All right. So that is the S&P 500 setup, great short setup confirmed by hedging flow and by order flow in book map here, as well as the levels, spot gamma levels, especially the reversal at the volatility trigger. And let's just take a look at the spy chart. And this level, the volatility trigger is closer to correct. So these are my, these are my cloud notes for spy here. And I calculated this ratio today for spy and SPX. And that level is, is closer than what is showing on the ES chart. And you can see that S&P 500 spy moves up just above that level and then reverses lower. The order flow is easier to see in, in ES. And these are the levels that are in play. There's the 400 spy 400 key gamma strike and the SPX 4000 key gamma strike just below. And there's that 3976 support level. And there is what appears to be a shift in order flow here as price moves below that level, then starts to move above. Notice all the green dots, the aggressive buyers coming in. And we can probably see that with, with a shift, slight shift in CVD, slight shift higher in CVD. Okay, there's a question in, in discord that 1150 45 period and hero to take that as a potential shift in market direction. All right. So let's go back and take a look at hero now. So yeah, any time I see a shift in, in hedging flow, I will always look. So I see the shift in, in hedging flow, a divergence potentially, let's just zoom all the way out. So that does look like a potential divergence here with that shift in, in hero now shifting higher. So yeah, I look at, look at this first and then I go over to book map. And sometimes it takes quite a while to play out in ES by SPX. So we go back and we saw the, so we saw the shift slight shift in order flow here around that this 3976 support level. Let's go back to ES now. And you can see the same shift in order flow here. So it did not happen or are exactly around this 3976 support level, but it's clear to see the shift in order flow there, all these green dots coming in a break of this downtrend. And then the trend slowly reverses higher. And another thing to notice, and this is also pretty typical, this rising light blue line. These are iceberg orders. And this is what larger traders use to, to hedge their delta to hide their size. So large iceberg orders and they often will buy weakness and sell strength. And they're, again, larger traders, they don't have to worry about, you know, specific entries, they may not be using stop orders. They can withstand a lot more pain than, you know, probably most retail traders. So they, again, this is pretty typical with iceberg orders is larger traders buying weakness and selling strength. All right, so that is, that's the S&P 500. And yeah, thanks for pointing that out. JEC is the, again, we're looking at the shift in hedging flow and that can often precede a shift in the move. And then we see that the, again, the larger traders are buying with iceberg orders. And that typically, you know, sometime you would expect the market to turn around with all those larger traders buying. And it's pretty evident here in the order flow. And there's a question, presumed market makers unwind, there's zero D, zero DTE hedges later in the day as they expire. And yes, I would assume that, you know, they're, you know, they're trading in and out of those, in and out of those hedges based on the zero DTE options pretty quickly. All right, so the next setup that I want to take a look at is NVIDIA. And this was very interesting. I'm going to zoom in on, first of all, the morning here. And let's go take a look at, excuse me, let's go take a look at HERO. All right, I'm going to change this back to all trades, next expiration, update. And we'll go to NVIDIA. And remember NVIDIA reported earnings yesterday, and the market took that as positive. So this was pretty expected behavior this morning, that at some point, traders would come in and buy calls. And that's what's shown by this rising orange line right at the open here. And I posted this in Discord as well, this setup. And let's go take a look at book map now. So again, NVIDIA, the slight downtrend, note the shift in order flow with that trend break. So slightly bearish here, then a shift higher. Notice all the green dots coming in here at this consolidation that's confirmed by the CVD line. And we know that orange line showing that traders are buying NVIDIA calls is going straight up. So this made for a good long entry anywhere after this trend break. Now let's go take a look. I'm going to zoom out now. I'm going to go all the way to yesterday. So here's yesterday. This is starting at the open yesterday. And then here is the big move up right after the close with the earnings report. Price gaps up and then continues higher. So that's the two-day picture so far. And remember that NVIDIA gapped up substantially. Now let's take a look at the, take a look at another chart, spot gamma here. This is the equity hub. And I don't know why this keeps refreshing. I think this may be a new setting in Chrome. I need to check on that. All right, so here's my watch list. Here's NVIDIA. And this is the composite view. This is showing that market makers position. This is put dominated with this red color. This dark blue line outline is showing pretty heavy options activity. The thicker line and the darker it is showing more options activity. And the position, options position is, is moderate, not light, but not heavy. And the interesting thing to note here is that NVIDIA traded all the way up here to around 238 this morning. And this is showing, this is the SG momentum indicator showing the rate of change of gamma. And notice it is decreasing rapidly as price increases. And this is an indication that market makers requirement to hedge is decreasing. And we can also see that with the put call impact chart. So we see above, below the 250 level that again NVIDIA is put dominated, meaning that traders are long puts, market makers are short puts, and that rate of change of gamma, we'll look at the blue line here, starts to flatten pretty, you know, pretty substantially up around that, that 238 level. So we're looking at this right here. So again, that is showing that market makers hedging requirement is decreasing rapidly as that, you know, as price increases. All right. So the question, can I show, let me read through all the questions in YouTube. All right. So can I show hero for NVIDIA? We were just looking at that. So let's go back. There's put some calls. And let's change back to the, change back to the total signal here. And again, the, you know, there's the strong call buying in the morning. And then as hero drops, price drops even more. Again, remember that now traders are taking negative delta positions. And also market makers hedging requirement is decreasing rapidly as price increases. So seeing that, that gives you a good indication that any longs that you have, you know, you certainly want to consider exiting up here. And price consolidates that level, you know, around 238 or so, you know, good time to get out of longs. Okay. I thought, I thought that was really interesting. It was a great long. I think it was about the only long this morning, but a good setup pretty clear with the order flow confirming hedging flow confirming and then having good price targets above. I'm going to zoom in again, clear this, zoom in, you know, see all the, all the liquidity above these are price targets, price seeks these levels. And then price consolidates as again, market makers, traders started taking negative delta positions, probably taking profits. And then market makers hedging requirements starts to decrease. All right, let's take a look at some other setups. So those were the, I think the most interesting primary setups today. And here are some others that I saw. And there's Apple. And there's a question once somebody in discord wants to look at ES again, we'll take a look at the end. I want to go through some other setups. There's the video. Once I zoom out a little bit, get rid of that large volume in the morning, you can see there's a very strong correlation between hedging flow and price action. We'll take a look at Apple. Look at all this, these large block trades here are kind of obscuring. So we'll just skip that and we'll move on. Take a look at Amazon. So there's Amazon, very strong correlation between price action and hedging flow. We'll take a look at book map. So there's Amazon, the reversal or the move lower, a consolidation at the 96 hedge wall, then a move lower down to this 94 and 95 liquidity. And then note the shift in order flow. All the green dots, aggressive buyers with their market buy orders coming in as Amazon touched the lower edge of the expected move. And now it looks like it's heading back to the 96 hedge wall. Let's go back and take a look at Hero. And again, strong correlation between hedging flow and price action, confirmation with order flow. Google, pretty strong confirmation between hedging flow and price action. Let's take a look at Metta and a stronger correlation here. And Metta usually definitely has more range, daily range than Google. Let's go take a look at book map. There's Metta. So move lower in the in the morning, a couple of buy sweeps here. And those could be stop runs. Price reverses lower, heads down to the 170 hedge wall down here. And eventually reverses higher. And again, very strongly confirmed by Hero here. Traders are in the morning, they were selling calls, primarily driving price action. And then in the afternoon, they've started buying calls and selling puts, calls shown by the orange line put shown by the blue line. Take a look at Microsoft. All right. Again, bearish, bearish hedging flow. Take a look at book map and nice reversal lower trend break. Bearish water flow all day, still continues bearish. Negative CVD, all the pink dots. Even now, as price is moving higher, first target was the 250 hedge wall. And price didn't quite make it to all the liquidity there at the 250 Kegama strike. So good short set up here in Microsoft this morning, QQQ. Let's go take a look at Hero for QQQ. So this is interesting, this reversal in all these stocks indices. So this morning, it looks like puts were driving price action. Traders buying puts, market makers are selling puts, and they have to sell QQQ, sell NQ futures to hedge their delta exposure. And then around noon, that hedging flow shifts to positive delta shift down again. So it was a little bit more clear to read in the morning. Let's take a look at Tesla. All right. There's a question in YouTube and ES in your opinion, do the best setups present in the morning as traders position for the day? And do you see setups in the afternoon much? Well, first of all, I primarily day trade in the morning. So that is the time that I have set aside for day trading. And then as the morning progresses, I have to prepare for this webinar. And then I'm doing this webinar this afternoon. And then, then after that, there's not much day left. And I'll manage my longer term inventory options inventory around the end of the day. So that's how I approach my day. So anyway, I do find that the best setups are using hero in the morning. And that's what I'm used to trading. And that's, you know, one reason I like to trade in the morning is the, there's a stronger correlation between hedging flow and price action and order flow. And again, ES and all the stocks on my watch list, you know, that's pretty typical. So let's let's take a look at ES now. And then we'll wrap it up with with ES. So nice short setup this morning. Notice this sharp drop in in hero here. Let's just see what traders were doing. And they were selling calls and buying puts. All right, let's go take a look at at book map. All right, so here's the the short setup this morning. I'm going to zoom in on this. And again, remember that traders were aggressively selling calls and buying puts. And I'm looking at this break of this wedge, then a retest of the VWAP and point of control there. That's the at the opening print. And then the move lower. And in contrast to yesterday, where the order flow was a little bit confusing, there's no question today that this is bearish. You know, you can just see all the pink dots in here. So order flow confirming hedging flow confirming in hero, short setup, first target at the 200 key gamma strike, price chops around that level for a while, and then moves down another three points to the 197 level. So that's the setup in Tesla this morning. All right, let's go let's question a request to go back and look at ES again. And then we'll wrap it up. So here's ES again. And you can just clearly see the shift in order flow here. All the pink dots, aggressive sell over sell orders, and bearish order flow, bearish CVD, sell stop orders. And then all the green dots come in all the aggressive buyers, just below that support level, and prices moving higher. And let's go back and take a look at Hero SPX, you can clearly see here the the shift in hedging flow. And this is the total. So this is not only zero DTE, but this is also all expirations shift in hedging flow. And then price follows what looks like almost an hour and a half later. And again, sometimes it takes a while for the turn around in the S&P 500. But it's definitely something to look for. And again, I talked about the steps, you see this divergence in Hero, then you look at the book map chart for confirmation in order flow. And hopefully a level that you can lean against some kind of support level. And the reversal today was a little bit lower than that support level. But it was very clear to see in book map the shift in order flow. Okay, that is all that I have for today. Remember tomorrow the PCE data comes out at 8 30am Eastern Time and the consumer sentiment at 10am. And then we'll talk about that during my session, we'll see how the market reacts. And I want to thank you for your questions and comments. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.