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Playbook

The playbook.
22 sessions.

Every case here is a real SPX session. Every number was read from the archive the dashboard itself is built from (CBOE signed one-minute data). Fourteen of the twenty-two were called live in #qo-market-data — the post, its timestamp and the archive reading for that same minute sit side by side in each write-up.

Nothing in here says what to do. It shows what the data did.

22
sessions
14
called live
8
patterns

Part 1

How to read each widget

widgetwhat it measureshow it reads
Net gamma — the regime (Cumulative Net Gamma, in its own slot, read in Absolute)market-maker net gamma through the session, by cohort: 0DTE, All-expiry, All − 0DTEAbove zero — positive: dealers trade against the move. Ranges narrow, levels hold. Below zero — negative: dealers trade with it. Moves travel faster and farther — in both directions. A cross through zero is the regime change. Into the close 0DTE gamma gets noisy — it rises as expiry approaches — so late in the day read All − 0DTE in Absolute: that is the book that carries over, and it shows the regime the next session opens in.
Strike Profile — the laddergamma by strike, this minuteA large positive strike is where price slows or stops. A negative strike lets price through. A positive strike with a negative one right behind it is a sold vertical. Watch which strike leads and whether it is building or draining.
Charm (Charm Surface)how dealer hedges drift as the clock runsNegative = supportive, wind at your back. Positive = suppressive, wind in your face. It matters most after lunch on 0DTE.
Premium Flow (market-maker view, as on the dashboard)premium paid or received on the market maker's book, calls and puts, cumulativeCalls rising = bought. Puts falling = sold. Calls bought + puts sold together is the bullish pair; calls sold + puts bought is the mirror. One side alone is not confirmation.
Cumulative Net Delta — 0DTE togglethe 0DTE book's net delta, market-maker signedIn every bullish case in this set the line crossed above zero or made a session high after the low was in. It confirmed the move; it did not call the low.
VIX dashboard — front contractgamma and positions in the VIX options expiring nextThe largest positive strike in the expiring contract has been where a VIX spike stalled. Monthly contracts carry ten times the positions of weeklies — that is where the structure is.

Part 2

The eight patterns

A

The bullish stack — everything agrees

Conditions: positive gamma · a dominant positive strike building above price · charm supportive · calls bought and puts sold · 0DTE net delta crossing up or at session highs. What price did: ran to the strike, then stopped at it.

  • Case 01 · 09-03 — called live at 11:23: all four at once. 7711 → 7747 in thirty minutes; 7750 grew to +$49B and held the afternoon.
  • Case 02 · 09-02 — 7675 starts building at 10:09, price is there at 10:44.
  • Case 04 · 08-27 — 7730 and 7740 pop at 10:28; "there was the gamma squeeze" at 11:17; high on the second strike.
  • Case 12 · 09-17 — put selling all morning, supportive charm, 7650 overhead; high 3 points under it.
  • Case 14 · 06-29 — the cleanest one in the archive. By 12:10 nothing was left on the board below price. Closed on the strike.
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B

The dive and the bounce — a dominant positive strike below

Conditions: price falling toward the largest positive strike, built from puts customers sold · put premium still being sold into the low · VIX peaking in the same minute. What price did: stopped within a few points of the strike.

  • Case 05 · 09-14 — floor built at 7590 while sellers leaned; low two points above; then the full bullish stack.
  • Case 13 · 08-26 — level posted at 07:17; low 2.4 points above it at 12:44.
  • Case 15 · 07-23 — 74 points straight down to 7375; low at 7376.00. Honest note: charm was suppressive and net delta never turned. A strike and put sellers were enough.
  • Case 16 · 06-11 — VIX 22; low seven points above 7250; +155.
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C

The dive and the hold — bearish flow, no break

  • Case 03 · 09-04 — calls sold, puts bought all morning, and 7700 underneath. Low 6 points above it. The flow was right about direction and wrong about distance.
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D

One strike caps the day

  • Case 08 · 09-08 — 7700: no print at or above it for 4 h 40 m, net premium flat. A pin, not a fight. When the strike drained, price left within five minutes.
  • Case 22 · 09-10 — two verticals in one session: a put spread sold below in the morning, a call spread sold above at lunch. Close between them.
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E

The positive gamma regime

  • Case 09 · 08-31 — "$6.9B of positive gamma mud". 32.5 points all session.
  • Case 17 · 06-04 — positive every minute: a slow 80-point grind to one strike, stopped 1.8 short.
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F

The negative gamma regime

  • Case 18 · 07-29 — Fed day, all-expiry negative every minute: −77, +110, −137.
  • Case 19 · 08-04 — the upside version: +129, straight through every positive strike, VIX up with price.
  • Case 21 · 06-16 — the bearish mirror: calls sold, puts bought, negative all day, low in the last minute.
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G

Event days — the positioning moves first

  • Case 06 · 09-16 (FOMC) — net gamma went to zero at 14:12 with price seven points off the high. "Call buying has shut down" at 14:32. −115 to 7.77 above the 7500 put strike.
  • Case 11 · 09-11 (CPI) — sat on the zero gamma line, never crossed, and the dominant upper strike rebuilt.
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H

The VIX Tuesday — the day before VIX expiry

  • Case 20 · 06-09 — VIX 17.6 → 23.29, stalling on the expiring contract's largest positive strike (23). SPX low one minute earlier.
  • Case 07 · 09-15 — before the monthly: dealers short ~374,000 calls; VIX stalls under 18; SPX low in the same minute. No put buying, so no follow-through.
  • Case 10 · 09-01 — "market is in negative gamma now": +34 then −52; VIX high and SPX low in the same minute.
  • Case 19 · 08-04, Case 21 · 06-16 — also Tuesdays; VIX1D repricing a day early.
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Part 3

What repeats

  1. The low or high lands within a few points of the largest positive strike — 2.3, 2.4, 6.1, 7.8 and 1.0 points across five different cases.
  2. The strike builds before price gets there. Case 02: 35 minutes. Case 04: 49 minutes. Case 06: five hours.
  3. VIX peaks within a minute of the SPX low — Case 07, Case 10, Case 15, Case 16, Case 20.
  4. Flow confirms or it doesn't. Case 07 had negative gamma, suppressive charm and falling price — and the bearish premium pair (calls sold, puts bought) never appeared. It went nowhere.
  5. The regime decides the distance. Same Fed, same data releases: 32 points in positive gamma, 324 points travelled in negative.
  6. When the structure leaves, price follows. Case 06 (19 minutes later), Case 08 (5 minutes), Case 04 (the last hour).

Part 3b

Beyond the hand-picked days — 101 sessions, 2026-04-16 to 2026-09-09

The cases are chosen because they are clear. This is what the whole sample says, from the nightly conditions files (0DTE ladder sampled every five minutes):

0DTE net gamma positive for…sessionsmedian rangemean range
75% of the session or more2751 pts61
25-75%4164 pts66
under 25% (negative regime)3370 pts71
  • The regime shifts the range by about a third. It does not shift direction: median open-to-close is 28 points in all three groups.
  • In 37 of 101 sessions the day's high or low printed within 5 points of a strike that ranked top-three positive on the 0DTE board at that moment (low: 21 sessions, high: 18).
  • It is a tendency, not a rule. 06-05 sat in the positive group and still ranged 173 points.

15 slides

The playbook as slides

Slide 1 of 15

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These pages describe what the displays show and what the data did on the sessions shown. They are not trading advice, and a past session is not a forecast of a future one.

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