How To Use Spotgamma's HIRO transcript

Hello and welcome to the options millionar channel. I'm Andrew and today we're going to be going over spot gamma's hero tool. In this video I will show you all the characteristics and preferences that you can use to set up the tool as well in which the manner I use this tool to better my trading. Let's take a look. Hero is a real-time signal tool that provides options flow both on the shortdated and longdated options expiration depending on whatever you select.

Now this tool is exactly what it sounds. It's a flow tool. It tells you not only the quantity of shortdated or longdated options entering or exiting the market, but it also identifies the trend of those flows entering or exiting the market, which is equally as important. Now, there's a couple of different things here to take a look at. Firstly, is the graphical representation that has plotted lines that show the notional values.

Below that, you have the flow data. These are the actual contracts being posted. This is a very common way to show options analytics. However, using this data coupled with the graphical representation provides a unique edge on showing where the options chains are shifting. Now, diving deeper into this tool, you have the ability to monitor all expiration contracts on the S&P or simply just the zero DTE expirations. You could select one or the other or both of them with the toggle buttons here at the top.

If I want to look at only all of the expirations, I could select off the next expiration and I'm simply left with all of the S&P expirations combined. If I want to look at just shortdated options like zeros, then I'll turn on the next expiration and turn off all and I'm left with only shortdated to zero TTE option flows. In addition, if you look at this selection tool here, I can have it divided out calls and puts or I could have it combined where it shows the total delta notional represented as one single line.

Now, if I come over here to the top left, it shows the labels for the tool. All expiration colors are listed as blue puts, orange calls. For next expirations, it's light blue puts, green calls. This will help me determine at a quick glance which product is which. Now, when deciding which expiration toggle switch to use is dependent on what style of analysis am I doing. If I'm doing long dated analysis or any kind of macro analysis, I will use the all trades feature to determine what the general market on the wide scale is doing.

If I'm looking for short dated trades such as a scalp or a day trade, then I will select off the the all trades indication and I will simply use the zero DTE indication. Doing this allows me to zoom in a little bit on the analytics and see what the market is doing right now for a quick decision. Now, let's go into some settings. If you click on this icon, you will see this screen pop up. This is where you can custom tailor the hero indicator.

From this window, you can also select all trades next expiration just like you can, but in addition, you now see this toggle switch that says retail. Leaving this box unswitched will show you only institutional trades. Turning this switch on will show you retail positions. If you would like to have this on your chart, you can also see this as retail puts purple, retail calls yellow. In addition, you can also select the time frame on which you choose to trade, one minute up to the daily chart.

Now, once you're setting up the characteristics of the tool, you can choose the sizing by clicking on this box. You can choose to close the bottom, close the sidebar, or go full screen. And this is my preferred setting to view the tool. This is a tool that I like to look at to balance both active positioning and what I call skew. Now, what is skew? Skew is the absolute control by one party of the direction of the market.

So if call sellers are hitting drastically, that's a heavy skew. If it's all call buying all day long, it's going to be a very difficult market to short and it's something that I want to maintain a long bias on. And conversely, if the put buyers are controlling the tape aggressively and there's no real call activity here, the skew is centered towards the put buying. Thus, I want to maintain a short bias on the market and not necessarily a long bias.

And the great thing about this tool is not only does it help identify who's in control in the market, but also when the tides start to shift and it's understanding both the actual flow of the positioning and when the activity starts to dwindle on one side and shift towards the other. Let me show you exactly what I mean. Friday, November 7th, 2025 was a perfect example of one party controlling the morning and then the opposing party controlling into the afternoon.

Now, the best thing about the hero tool that I like is that it presents the data in what's called delta notional. Now, what does that mean delta notional? Well, if you're unfamiliar with the Greeks, you should know that all long call positions are delta positive. On a long put position, that is a negative delta product. But all you need to know here to apply this tool is that since puts are a negative delta product, when the blue line goes down, that means they are increasing the long position of puts aka they are buying puts.

When this blue line goes up or more positive delta, that means they are shorting puts aka bullish positioning. Now let's talk about the green line calls. Since calls are positive delta, when this green line is going up into positive delta territory, that means they are buying calls. When this green line is going down or negative delta territory, that means they are selling calls. If you look at the y-axis here to the right, you'll see zero and then negative numbers.

Zero and then positive numbers. Now knowing this information, let's take a look at an example from November 7th, 2025. This was a fantastic example of one party controlling the morning and the opposite party completely controlling and obliterating in the afternoon. The setup on this particular day was a very strong bare trend in the pre-market session and then opens up and then we dump all the way back over until about 11:00 Central, 12:00 Eastern time.

And that's where we're going to pick up. looking at the spot gamma tool right here that the market opens here and the put line significantly trends down from the open. So we open up at about 632 million of net negative notional on the puts and it continues to trend downward increasing the exposure of the puts until the final bottom right here at 1208 Eastern time 11:08 central time. Now if you look to the right it shows 3.3 billion in negative notional which is a very bearish positioning but that's not all I want to look at.

If I'm looking for a strong down move, I need to see how the calls are participating, too. And to do that, we look at the green line. So the green line, which is calls, opens the market at about 600 million positive delta, which is about the equivalent of the amount of puts that were open. So they had about equal amount of calls and puts at the open. No big deal. And as we get deeper in the day, we had a little bit of call buying and then they sell it back off.

And calls pretty much remain inactive until about 11 central, 12 Eastern. What do I mean by inactive? I mean they increased the value of the calls until about 1.6 billion, 1.7 billion. meaning they didn't increase or decrease. They just kind of pinned up in this amount of notional. Now, if you're using this tool to analyze market conditions, this is something to be aware of because 1.6 1.7 billion of notional of calls could be said that is very bullish.

People will be looking at this. Hey, there's almost 2 billion of notional of calls on the books. Isn't that bullish? Well, maybe. And that's why I say you need to keep an eye on this when I see this amount of delta on the books, especially on such a red day that I want to be aware of this because if I'm looking for a strong downtrend on a particular session, I want to see a lot of put buying, which is this blue line going down, and I want to see call selling, which is also this green line going down.

If I don't see this green line really catching up to the bearishness, then that's a big red flag for me of a possible impending bounce on the markets. So, as the puts come off here, I'm watching the calls right here at 12:08 Eastern, 11:08 Central time. They start to sell puts, meaning closing of the puts or shorting to open. We don't know. All we know is that they're selling puts, this blue line starts to crease back up.

And at about the same time, the call line starts to pick up. So, warning signal number one that the market was going to bounce was that they were not closing any of the calls. Warning signal number two that there was a bounce coming is that put notional started to decrease back to positive. call notional started to increase further positive and if you look on the chart right at 11:00 central 12:00 Eastern was when the bottom of the market came finally the final volume hit there at 11:15 central 12:15 Eastern and then that's all she wrote Friday November 7th was a phenomenally bullish afternoon everything after that time frame was straight call buying by the green line rocketing and then put closing which went from 3 billion to 2 billion of puts 7 billion of zero DTE notional is a phenomen nominal amount of call buying.

Anything over about 3 billion is considered a very high amount for a zero DTE session. But this is the way that I use the hero tool when I'm trading. I want to identify who is taking control of the chart. Sometimes it's not going to be that accurate. It's going to be back and forth. It's going to be balanced to equal the number of calls and buys. It's going to be they are both selling calls and selling puts, which makes it a tight range iron condor style day.

So, it's not always going to be incredibly accurate, but the market will show you signs of what it wants to do. If I see a lot of call selling and put buying, I'm looking for a down day. If I'm seeing a lot of put selling, call buying, I'm going to look for an upday. Now, instead of an early red move followed by a late green move, here is a early green followed by a late red. Now, the reason why I want to take a look at this one is because we never really had a lot of call buying here.

Now, when I see this, I am very skeptical of prolonged upside moves. Now, what do I mean? Obviously on this chart we had a very green move. The S&P went from 67.95 at the open up to 68.49. That is nearly a 50 point pop on the S&P followed by a sell-off. Now in the middle of all this, despite the fact that the S&P was rocketing 50 points, which is a huge move. If you look at the option chain for November 4th, they never really bought calls.

The market opened with about 80 million of calls on the books and then the entire session they were selling calls. They never actually bought calls to support the upside. The call flow sold off the entire day including the morning. The big pop that happened here from an option chain perspective at least was driven by a lot of positive delta due to the selling of puts. So the blue line as puts here that we already know.

So at the open the market went from 272 million of long puts and all the way to 1.4 billion in positive puts. So this was a put sellers day, not a call sellers day. And what happens right here at about 10:41 Eastern time, 9:41 central, which is right here, the market begins to sell right off. In addition, they started to buy back all the puts and then that's all she wrote. The blue line went all the way down. We ended up finishing at 3 billion negative notional on puts, which is a very bearish indication.

And then 3.2 billion of negative calls, which is also very bearish. So, this was a double negative selling calls, buying puts, very negative session, and we closed down. This is just a few ways that I utilize trading the hero indicator on spot gamma. It's a fantastic resource for identifying pivots or skew or the strength in one side of the tape or the other. But that's all that's to it. Pretty simple tool. Not much to it.

It's a fantastic tool to help you with your situation awareness on what's going on under market conditions. Especially that the zerodt market is becoming a bigger and bigger part of everyday trading. In fact, last I checked, zerodt options made up over 70% of all options activity. So, it's definitely a big player to be aware of. If you use this in conjunction with your primary system, I guarantee you it'll trim up your entries and help you take a little bit better care of your targets.

If you want to see this in live action, come join us every single day. We do live streaming with trading at market open every single session. I'm wish I trade VPA, volume price analysis. And of course, I use the hero tool for more clarity. If you have any questions, please hit me up optionsmillionaire2020@gmail.com. And of course, like this video and subscribe to the channel to get notifications for all future content.

If you'd like to sign up for Spotgama, use the link down in the description. and I am an affiliate of Spotcam. It will help you get you some heavy discounts off of your initial cost of subscription. Thank you for taking the time to watch the video. Until next time, I'm out.