The nice thing about gamma (GEX) is that sometimes it previews the possible day’s move after the market opens but before the move happens, which happened this morning. While we enjoy prognosticating and laying out possible pathways that might play out over days and weeks, intraday signals allow for immediate action and immediate feedback, whether right or wrong.
In our free Discord channel, we pointed out that SPY and SPX were showing positive total GEX (on a 0 DTE basis, not total across all timeframes) and SPY 530/ SPX 5300 were obvious targets. QQQ looked more negative, which we saw as an offsetting possibility, but overall we leaned positive. This wasn’t the strongest setup we’ve ever seen, but GEX flow and even the option volume at 5300 told the story. Chop, chop…
The result of today’s rally was the market putting in its first day of closing near the intraday high since July 31.

SPX closed the day looking more positive, closing above the declining Hull Moving Average as we see on the chart below, also breaching the middle Keltner channel on a weekly timeframe.

SPX GEX is no longer in the -1B strong negative GEX category, seeing a decrease in negative GEX to what we consider a “neutral” level at -316M. While GEX at the very extremes can be a good contrarian signal, in general, positive GEX is positive for the market and negative GEX is negative for the market, as a quick reminder. Our Youtube channel and our Geek’s University course have plenty of short tutorials covering the basics of GEX.

So the coast is clear, right? Yes, clear as mud. For one, SPY has only moved from a very negative total GEX level to a still solidly negative GEX level. Bulls can celebrate the decrease in negative GEX, which was substantial, but we are still in solid negative territory.
One other counterpoint to the bearish GEX picture as it pertains to SPY and SPX: SPX and SPY sometimes flip-flop as far as which one presents the better leading picture, but it seems like SPX tends to be more accurate and less influenced by retail, so we’ll consider the SPX picture as a slightly overweighted positive as of today.

Not so fast, again- QQQ has rallied to within 1% of the middle Keltner channel around 453, which might represent short-term resistance. Holding above the Hull Moving Average is a positive, but if you look at daily timeframes (my charts displayed are weekly for the sake of today’s newsletter), you’ll see that QQQ is also still struggling with support turned resistance as represented by the 9-day SMA.
In summary, we have conflicting bullish and bearish chart signals, and a conflicting GEX picture. QQQ appears to be more negative in terms of the chart, while SPY and SPX are in conflict with their own GEX pictures.

Let’s pivot to one interesting idea that we’ve already implemented for our Educational Portfolio, GLD. We still see a long setup here, with the 230 strike showing large positive GEX for August 16 as well as farther out into September. The total GEX picture is very positive, and we see high option volume (the light blue bars) at 230 and 235 today.

The Keltner channel is in a solid uptrend, we are above the Hull Moving Average, and the Keltner upside target of 230, while strictly theoretical, also matches with the markets positioning at the 230 level.

As for our gameplan tomorrow, we will do the same thing we did today: Go into the day with a couple of potential scenarios to watch for, but ultimately, we will look to our GEX Dashboard in the morning to ascertain the markets actual positioning for the day. We don’t always see great trade setups, but we also don’t have to trade every day…We do want to strike when the iron is hot, though!

We also invite you to check out our community discord for our latest market conversations and trade idea discussions.

If you’re interested in accessing to our tools and analytics, be sure to check out our website!

We have a variety of educational videos on YouTube as well! Thanks for being part of our community and know that we invite your feedback.

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