 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. General Disclosure. I'll bookmap them in materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. Trading futures, equities, and options involve substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Here's my contact information. The best way to get in touch with me is through Discord. My name on Discord is Doug P. Also in Bookmap Discord, there's an Options-Doug Chat channel. That's a great place to post questions, comments, and content related to the topics of my presentation and the topics of the channel which I'll go through in just a moment. And by the way, Bookmap Discord is free and available to everyone. Whether you subscribe to Bookmap or not, there's a lot of great content there. Right, I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter, and my name there is at Doug Place. The focus of my presentation today and the focus of the Options-Doug Chat channel 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. I use positional analysis. I look at how traders and market makers are positioned in the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day as well as a directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. I look at real-time order flow in Bookmap and real-time market maker hedging flow in SpotGamma Hero to confirm my thesis and for setups for entries and exits. And when I talk about setups today, setups can be taken any number of ways. For example, the S&E 500 setups can be taken with ES futures, spy shares, spy options, SPX options, or even ES options. Questions and comments are welcome, and I will be watching both the Options-Doug Chat channel as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. Please feel free to post, and I'll do my best to answer your questions. And hello, Don. Welcome. Good afternoon to you. Welcome, you're here. Welcome. Glad you're here. Same to you, Gray. Good afternoon. Welcome. Glad you're here. All right, my agenda for today, Wednesday, November 15th. First of all, I want to go over news items, economic data, and events for today and the rest of the week. Then I'll go through my positional analysis. Then I'll review some setups from earlier today. And then I'll take a look at the live market. And when I get to the live market, if anyone has any stocks they want me to take a look at, please let me know, and I'll be glad to do that. All right, let's start with news items. Excuse me. So for today, of course, yesterday's CPI report came out. Three standard deviation move higher in equities and the indices. Huge day. And then today, PPI data and retail sales data came out. For PPI, it was similar to CPI, less than expected, less than previous. And retail sales were slightly greater than expected, which was negative. And but much less than the previous number. So retail sales, a slight decline month over month in retail sales. All right, for the rest of the week, let's see, tomorrow jobless claims. Not really much of a market mover, typically 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. And then the next big event for the week is the November options expiration that's on Friday. And let's take a look how this expiration is stacking up. So what this chart is showing is delta notional. This is market makers delta notional for a variety of expirations. And this is for a combined SAP 500 NASDAQ and Russell 2000. So what this chart is showing is this is the November expiration on Friday. Orange bars are call delta, put bars, put delta. So this is a very call dominated options expiration. And typically in a call dominated expiration, those calls expire. Those calls are stabilizing the market. And there is often a move lower, a little bit of a consolidation after a call dominated options expiration. Just the opposite of a put dominated negative gamma expiration. So very, very call dominated expiration as it is today. We'll take a look at this again tomorrow for a final reading before the expiration on Friday. All right, so that's the news for the week. Now let's take a look at the SAP 500 first. Start with my positional analysis. This is the ES futures and book map. Before I take a closer look at this chart, I want to take a look at a larger time frame. So I'm going to go to the SPX. This is a 30 day one hour chart. And I will take a closer look at price activity for the last three days. So we can see that more clearly. I know all these labels kind of obscure the price for today. I just want to point out, first of all, the key turning points. So this is Monday, October 30th. Let me make sure. And this marked really the low point in a downtrend. Traders were buying on Friday. Traders were buying calls concerned about weekend risk. And there was no significant change over the weekend. And implied volatility collapsed. Those puts lost value. Market makers bought back. Short hedges. And then there was a huge put-vanna rally. Then consolidation. And then last Friday, this was the Magnificent 7 rally. Traders decided. There was enough of a dip in the Magnificent 7 stocks that they could buy calls, driving price much higher. Those Magnificent 7 stocks have a strong influence on the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. And this is on Tuesday. Huge gap up. Huge day with the better than expected CPI report. And we'll talk more about what is happening today in a few minutes when I get to my thesis. So first of all, let me go over the levels now. The purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. That changes once a week. Based on the options market, Note SPX is trading well above the upper weekly expected move. The dash blue lines. And that changes once a week. I update that every weekend. And then the dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper daily expected move. SPX is trading within that range today. All right, so those are the expected moves. Now the red horizontal lines are showing the spot gamma levels. These are proprietary spot gamma levels available to spot gamma subscribers in a variety of platforms. This is thinkorswim. I'm going to point out the key daily levels. First of all, the put wall is at 4,200. That's a strike with a large net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. Note that level did move up from yesterday, 4,000 yesterday to 4,200 today. And the next level up is the volatility trigger at 4,370. That is spot gamma's proprietary volatility trip level, flip level. Below that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. In a negative gamma environment, market makers have to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. On the other hand, above that level, like SPX is trading now, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. In a positive gamma environment, market makers have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue or decrease volatility. And note, again, SPX trading well above that level in a positive gamma environment. We'll take a closer look at gamma notional in just a couple of minutes. Then the next level up is 4,500. That's the absolute gamma strike. That's a strike with the largest absolute positive and negative gamma. That level also moved up from 4,400 yesterday to 4,500. So that is the level with the highest amount of gamma weighted open interest. And then finally, the call wall up at 4,550. That's a strike with a large net positive gamma that can be expected to act as resistance. And that level also moved higher from 4,450 yesterday to 4,550. So a hand trick for SPX, put wall, call wall, absolute gamma strike all shifted higher, very bullish. All right, that's kind of the bigger picture view of the levels. Let's take a look now at a shorter time frame. This is SPX. I'm showing about four days worth of data here in a one minute chart. The shaded portion is that Magnificent 7 rally. And then Tuesday, huge gap up. And most of the action was in the gap up. This was Tuesday, the CPI report. And then consolidation today. Here is the upper weekly expected move. Here's the 4,500 level. That is the absolute gamma strike. More less acting as support today. All right, those are the levels in play for today. Let's just take a look and see what's above. So up above the upper daily expected move, as well as this combo L5 level that combines SPX and SPI, gamma weighted open interest, into one level in terms of SPX price. All right, let's take a look at book map now. So in book map, I have my own cloud notes. So I can show SPX levels and SPI levels and any other levels I want to show, all in one column here. So this is the 4,500 level. That is the absolute gamma strike. And then just above the SPI 450 absolute gamma strike, also call wall. So price has been trading above the SPI call wall at 450. That level did move higher. Also, that is the absolute gamma strike again. That level, again, moved higher. And then also for SPI, the volatility trigger moved higher. And that's just down below here at 449. So a hat trick for SPI as well. And for SPI, the put wall did move lower. All right, that's the SPX levels in play for today. And around this 451 level acted more or less as resistance. Good entry point for a short that I'll talk about. And then it looks like the SPI 449 level volatility trigger acting as acted as support earlier today. And now we'll see what happens at the 450 level. We'll see if this downtrend line holds. Looks like it may not be holding. All right, so those are the levels in play for today for the S&P 500. Note for SPX, ES, SPX, there is a difference in price. In that level, that difference is somewhere between 15 and 16 today. I'm using 15. It may be just a little bit higher. So ES minus SPX is 15. So the 4,500 SPX level is shown at ES4515. And I do post those index relationships. ES to SPI, NQ to QQQ, ES to SPX, and NQ to NDX. I post those every day in Discord. The level is the index relationships that I'm using. All right, so that's the S&P 500. We'll talk about setups in a few minutes. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. And for NASDAQ, this is the NQ Futures and Bookmap. I'll get back to this chart in just a minute. I want to take a look, first of all, at QQQ. So this is a one-day chart for QQQ. And when we get to NDX, we'll see what was acting as resistance today. So for QQQ, volatility trigger and call wall shifted higher. So now the call wall for QQQ is at 390, moving that potential ceiling higher. So this combo level in play for today, we'll see that in the NDX chart in just a moment. All right, so let's go ahead and take a look at NDX. Another one-day chart. Here's the call wall for NDX, 15,900 acting as resistance today. And then there's that combo level in this chart in terms of NDX price. All right, back to NQ. Again, I have my own cloud notes. There's the upper-dayly expected move for NQ, more or less acted as resistance. This was a little bit too much. This was the initial reaction to the 8.30 AM data. Quick move-up, reversal at 389. And the upper-dayly expected move for NQ. Let me explain these levels a little bit. Again, I have my own cloud notes. So I'm showing NDX levels, just the spot gamma levels for NDX. And I am showing QQQ levels, both the spot gamma levels, showing one of the white labels, and then just the round numbers with yellow. And then these are NQ numbers. Upper-dayly expected move, the big round numbers, there's 16,000. And the upper-weekly expected move, acting as support. All right, so that's NQ, the levels in play for today. And for today, there is a difference between NQ and NDX. Today, I'm using 70 points. And again, I posted that relationship in Discord this morning. All right, let's take a look at Gamma Notional now to see how market makers were positioned on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. So what I'm going to take a look at is Gamma Notional for SPX, SPY, NDX, QQQ, Russell 2000 RUT, and IWM. And I don't know if I've ever seen this before, but every single number is positive. So for all of these index products, this indicates that on this portion of the gamma curve, traders are short calls, market makers are long calls, and they have to trade against price to hedge their delta exposure. These numbers are quite positive, maybe somewhat at an extreme. Over 1 billion Gamma Notional for SPX, 900 million for SPY. And these numbers, there were some pretty strong shifts yesterday, especially for the IWM, Russell 2000. Yesterday, Gamma Notional for IWM was minus 1.114 billion. And today, it's positive 401 million. So quite a shift in Gamma Notional for IWM. All right, so let's take a look at the Vanna model. Now to see a graphical representation of what that means. Whoops, forgot to bring over that. All right, this is Gamma Notional. We'll start with SPX. I'm sorry, this is the Vanna model. Looking at the Vanna model for SPX, what this chart is showing is market makers delta notional. They're delta exposure on the vertical axis, price for SPX, on the horizontal axis. There are two curves on this chart. The light gray curve shows how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price only. The purple curve adds applied volatility to the equation. That's showing how market makers delta notional changes with changes in price and applied volatility. And the purple curve is what we're going to look at, very typical of a positive Gamma environment, with the skew both to the left and to the right. Right now, SPX is trading at around 4509, somewhere near the bottom of the curve. So right around there. So what this is showing is price increases, continues to increase. Market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And that is somewhat of a headwind for price. On the other hand, if price starts to move significantly lower, market makers would need to sell futures as well. So in this environment, there's really no boost, like in a negative Gamma environment, when SPX is trading well over here, no boost if price moves higher. So either way, if price makes a significant move, market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. All right, let's take a look at Spy and QQQ. Spy trading just around 450. So right here at the bottom of the curve as well. So if price moves in either direction, market makers will need to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. QQQ trading right around 386. Again, right on the bottom of the curve. All right, so based on this, and I will mention one other thing that in the Spot Gamma AM Founders Note, Brent has mentioned several times in the last few days potential for a move lower on VIX expiration. That was today. I forgot to mention that in the news. VIX expiration this morning at the cash open. And he showed a chart in the Spot Gamma AM Founders Note indicating that price has moved lower following that VIX expiration. I believe the last six VIX expirations, VIX expires once a month. So I'll leave that to Spot Gamma subscribers to take a look at that chart and get more information. But that was part of my alternate thesis for today. All right, so based on everything that I've mentioned, level shifting higher, that was thesis number one. Bullish the uptrend continues. Thesis number two, alternate thesis, was looking for consolidation based on the VIX expiration and also the upcoming call dominated options expiration on Friday. Looking for some consolidation, not necessarily a big move lower, but after such a big move yesterday and really the last couple of weeks. And then, again, VIX expiration, options expiration, looking for consolidation. That was the alternate thesis. All right, let's take a look at some setups now. First of all, I want to take a look at what options creators are doing, have been doing today. This is the SAP 500 hero signal. And hero is hedging impact real time options. This is available to Spot Gamma subscribers. And let me explain this chart. The white line is showing price for SPX, purple line, again hedging impact real time options. So everything that we've looked at so far, other than book map, has been based on static data, gamma weighted open interest that's updated once a day, sometime during the night. Now we're looking at real time data. This is showing options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal of SPX by XSP and ES futures. All into one combined signal. So if you trade any form of the SAP 500, this is typically the signal that you want to take a look at. And note it is trending lower for today. Notional value minus 2.69 billion negative. I'm assuming on this chart, talking about a couple of setups. So really the primary setup here was looking for that alternate thesis. There was a long this morning. It took a little while for that to get going. It looks like Hero was still trending down when price moved up. But really the prime signal here was this reversal lower, right around spy 451 as Hero started to make lower highs. Note a couple of flow alerts here. And these are often very good mean reversion signals. Let's just see what traders were doing. I've separated outputs and calls. Calls shown by the orange line, put shown by the blue line. So right around 1050, traders start buying puts. That's shown by the falling blue line. And then they start selling calls. Both lines moving in the same direction. That's a very strong directional signal, helping to set up that short. All right, let's go take a look at book map. Go back to the S&P 500, ES Futures. All right, so initially I thought maybe this 450 level absolute gamma strike call wall would act as resistance. And it was a little bit too early. There were some, the volume dots, showing some aggressive sellers coming in at that level. But again, just a little bit too early. And best to wait till the options traders started taking negative delta positions right around 1050, 11, 11 AM, right around here. And ES makes a lower high right at spy 451. Price moves lower down to 449. All right, it looks like they're trying to take it back up to 451 now. So let's take a look, closer look at this. So note, first of all, we'll take a look at CVD. Really, this is the dark blue-pink magenta line. Starts to move lower. And again, the volume dots are showing market buy minus sell. Green dots indicate more buyers than sellers. Magenta dots, more sellers than buyers. So more aggressive sellers here at the 451 level. And price moves lower. Notice price starts moving lower. Cell stop orders, shown by the following yellow line, help to fuel the move lower. So we know that around 1050, 11 AM, traders started buying puts, selling calls. So the orange line, blue line, we're moving in the same direction. And then price makes a lower high right at 451 as traders start taking negative delta positions and aggressive sellers start to come in, moving price lower. All right, so that's the short set up in the SB 500. And now traders are trying to take price back up. Let's just go back and take a look at hero. So there's a very strong correlation between options trades, market maker hedging activity, and price action today. Let's take a look at one other thing. Take a look at next ex-breed. These are options that it expired today. So it looks like longer-term traders and expressions longer term than today are a little bit more bearish than short-term traders, which really are only making up a small portion of the notional value. That's 45 billion versus minus 2.21 billion for all trades, all expirations. All right, so that's the SB 500 today. Again, it looks like now trying to make a reversal higher. This is totally to be expected in a positive gam environment. Let's go back to book map. Two-way trade, mean reverting price action. All right, let's take a look at NASDAQ now. So NASDAQ, pretty similar chart, except to me, this order flow looks much more bearish. All lines in the sub-chart trending lower, all are negative. That's icebergs, light blue line, stops, shown with the yellow line. So those are cell stops and also CVD, with a dark blue line shifting to magenta when it becomes negative. All right, let's check NASDAQ. So really the short was looking at this 15,900 level. The call wall, that's the NDX call wall, knowing where that level is. There were three tests of that level. It held its resistance every time. So you could have taken any number, any one of those levels, the last one at 11 AM, that typical time when options traders take their foot off the gas and price started to move lower, made a lower high, and then continued down. Let's go take a look at HERO. And that 15,900 level is what I was looking for. This is a combined signal for the NDX QQQ divergent setup. HERO makes a high right around 10.30, starts moving lower. And then price reverses lower right around 10.50, 11 AM, follows about 15, 20 minutes later. All right, Neo CTO ask these call walls, put walls, for how long are they valid for a day? So they change every day. So that's why I talk about why I look at the changes and the key daily levels every day to develop a thesis. So this indicates how market makers are positioning themselves in the options market, whether they have expectations for higher prices or lower prices. So they can change every day. In a market that's moving around a lot, they will change frequently. So I talked about all the shifts higher in the levels today, very bullish looking at that on the surface. So that was the basis of primary thesis. All right, let's take a look at one other signal. So again, that's a combined signal for NDX QQQ. We can also take a look at this Magnificent 7. This is a new indicator from Spot Gamma. Very, very good signal for movement in the SOB 500, as well as NASDAQ. So this is a combined signal for the stocks known as the Magnificent 7, Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla. Let's take a look at Magnificent 7. I lost my pen tool. And the signal for the Magnificent 7 hero signal turns over right around 10.50.11 AM and probably starts to move lower. All right, I'm looking at questions. Steven, I don't understand your question. What does even mean? Like, how do we use it? I talked about the call walls and put walls every day. During my webinar, a call wall is expected to act as resistance. And put wall expected to act as support. If the call walls move higher from day to day, that's a bullish signal. Put walls moving lower from day to day, that is a bearish signal. All right, so let's go back. Let's take a quick look at NASDAQ again. So Steven Stez is something you have to actively track to have an idea. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, so I have a handwritten trading journal. And every morning, as part of my preparation, I have a little maybe kind of a handwritten spreadsheet where I track the volatility trigger, put wall, call wall, absolute gamma strike, gamma notional, and support and resistance levels noted in the SpotGammaM Founders Note. I note those every day for SPX, SPI, NDX, QQQ, RUT, and IWM. So in the morning, when I'm doing my preparation and I write down all that information, it takes maybe five minutes. And then I just flip back to the previous page of my journal and compare the number today with the number from yesterday, circle it in blue if it increased, and circle it in red if it decreased. So I can just tell, just by a quick glance, whether that number increased or decreased. So that's how I track it. You can also go to the SpotGamma Equity Hub and take a look at the 10-day history. All right, so there's NASDAQ. Also, maybe trying to make a move higher, but to me, the order flow for NASDAQ, not looking so bullish, looking more bearish. All right, let's take a look at some stocks now. First, I want to take a look at AMD. And the thing to note here is for AMD, let's take a look at Hero for AMD. And the thing to note here is the call wall at 120. That is also the key gamma strike that was acting as resistance yesterday and today. So multiple chances for an entry short at the call wall. Yesterday afternoon, also this morning, right at the open, that level acted as resistance. Let's just zoom in here. That level price opened around that level, moved sharply lower, then came up retested the call wall, and then is moving lower as traders are taking negative delta positions. Let's just see what they're doing today. So they are selling calls and buying puts in AMD. So Neo says, the only thing you don't change every day is the upper and lower weekly expected move. That's correct. Everything else may change, and I track those changes. All right, let me check for questions in YouTube. So Truman asked, do they change from market close to open? Yes, so traders are during the day positioning themselves. But the information that's available is only available once a day that comes from the options clearing corporation, OCC, once daily, sometime overnight. Spot Gamma grabs that data and then calculates the new levels. And those are available to subscribers in the morning. So when I wake up and start my preparation in the morning, those levels have been updated by Spot Gamma. All right, so again, of course, they are changing. During the day, traders are positioning themselves with new data, new information. And but that won't be available until tomorrow. So that's what makes this hero signal so valuable, is showing what traders are doing today. All right, Stevens, just stick with it. This will start to make sense, I hope. All right, so that's AMD, multiple short setups, opportunities at the 120 call wall level. Go back to book map, 120 call wall, short right at the open, then right around 11 AM when everything started to reverse lower. All right, the next, Nvidia, very weak day in Nvidia today. Let's take a look at hero, O2, Nvidia. Note that 500 is the call wall, the key Gamma strike. Up above, zoom in on this chart, see what traders are doing. So in Nvidia, they are buying puts and selling calls. Showing by the falling blue line, falling orange line, very strong correlation between options trades, market maker hedging activity, and price action. In Nvidia, Truman says, he remembers how Brent said they update around 1 AM. Yeah, that's, you know, sometime overnight. So that data is available in the morning for your morning preparation. All right, bearish day here in Nvidia. Let's go take a look at book map again. Notice the multiple entry points at VWAP. That's shown by this light blue line. Oops, wrong tool. VWAP, light blue line, sharp drop lower, move back. Price really can't stay above VWAP and moves lower. All right, Tesla, strong move higher at the open for Tesla. Note all the green volume dots, up until about 130. A lot of aggressive buyers. Note the shift to magenta volume dots, right around 130. Let's take a look at hero and see what options traders are doing. Let's go to Tesla. 250 is the call wall key gimmastrike up above. Both price and hero make a higher low, just around 10 AM just before 10 AM. Note the very timely flow alert, right there at the bottom. Traders start taking positive delta positions and price moves higher. Take the foot off the gas at the typical time, around 11 AM, and price starts to move lower. Very typical pattern, bullish morning. Anywhere between 11 and 12 or so, traders take the foot off the gas, and price moves lower and consolidated. All right, Stephen says he's trying to master training with book map, thinking adding complexity might complicate his journey. I would, hard to advise, Stephen, I use both options. There are a variety of sources for just basic education. You might take a look at Tasty Live. Look at their website for just basic options and information. Just be aware that they are totally focused on premium selling. They're focused on selling options. And also, Spot Gamma has great resources on their website as well, basic options information, and also a lot of information about the things that I talk about. Go to the free resources on the Spot Gamma website. That should help as well. So what I've done is I've combined what I know about book map, what I know about options, and Spot Gamma to develop a way of trading based on options. I think that options trades, market maker hedging activity, or a key driver or price, and the equity index futures as well as many stocks. So that's why I focus on options. All right, does anyone have any stocks they want me to take a look at? Otherwise, we'll circle back to the S&P 500. Let's go back to take a look at book map. So it looks like price is chopping around the SPI 450 level. Note the point of control is shown. That may be difficult to see. That's this purple line here, point of control, VPOC, right around 450 now. You can see this is the session volume profile. And this is for the entire session. The began yesterday afternoon, 6 PM. And that is the most of the volume concentrated right around that 450 level. That's pretty typical in a positive gamma environment closed to expiration. That will price will pin around a kind of the key gamma level. Let's take a look at NASDAQ. So so far for NASDAQ, price is making lower highs. Actually made an equal high here. All right, Shane wants to look at AAL. I don't have that in book map. We'll take a look in hero. Not a lot of options volume today. Notional value, only 3.52 million. Price trading right around the 1250 call wall. Ceef Shaw wants to see Bitcoin. Sorry, I don't look at cryptocurrency at all. I don't think there's, you know, there are crypto related stocks here in hero. I don't have them in book map. I don't look at them. Bitcoin itself, there's no, as far as I know, there's no options market that is driving price. All right, let's go back to book map. Take a look at hero, the SB500. Looks like they may be trying to move price higher. Let's take a look at spy. So for spy, the hero signal continues to trend lower. NASDAQ, for NASDAQ, the hero signal is pretty flat since about 130 or so. And to me, this water flow for NASDAQ still looks, looks bearish. Overall, again, iceberg stop, CVD, all negative and still trending lower for the day. All right, let me mention some resources since there have been some questions about learning. First of all, let's go to spot gamma. This is available, this portion, this dashboard is available to spot gamma subscribers. The same information is available on the spotgamma.com website. Just looks a little bit different. This, so this information is available to subscribers as well as non-subscribers. It's free for everyone. Also in book map, let's go to education. You can go to the learning center and there's a lot of great information here for getting started with book map. Then also all the live streams that book map offers. So there's a live stream every day at 10 a.m. Bruce is on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Jay Trader on Wednesday. Stock Trader, Scott on Thursday. He's a futures trader. Then Tom B. Futures Trader comes on before me and then I'm on and then Algo Boys after me. Algo Boys only on Discord, not on YouTube. All right, so great resources from book map as well as spot gamma. All right, my time is up. I want to thank everyone for watching. Thank you for your questions and comments. Have a great evening and I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again, bye.