Let's say Esoteria really does sell me 100 Jun 5200/5600 Put Spreads.
We both trade live (no hedge).
We cross in Cboe's Complex Order Book
(sorry MBI no bro on this one)
How does each method capture the trade..?
First, naive portfolio construction.
It holds:
» Customers buy puts to hedge
» Customers sell calls to finance hedging
Market makers are therefore:
✓ Short all the Puts in the OI
✓ Long all the Calls in the OI
Dealer position, naive construction:
Short 100 Jun 5600 Puts
Short 100 Jun 5200 Puts
Market impact (dynamic) after our trade:
🔸Short Gamma
🔸Shorter Gamma to downside
🔸Charm influence is bullish until between strikes
🔸Market more volatile on selloffs
Next, Dealer Directional Open Interest (DDOI).
It holds:
» Customers pay the bid/ask to trade.
» Dealers collect the bid/ask (trade for edge).
Market makers are therefore:
✓ Buying the contracts trading closer to the bid
✓ Selling the contracts trading closer to the ask
Esoteria may be a great trader and correct on stuffing me with this June Put Spread.
But when it trades, I'm more likely to work the order below theo to get a decent execution price.
Dealers will see the Jun 5200 5600 PS trading .15 under on the COB.
So will the data boiz.
Dealer position, DDOI:
Long 100 Jun 5600 Puts
Short 100 Jun 5200 Puts
Market impact (dynamic) after our trade:
🔸Long Gamma until ~ 5350-5400
🔸Shorter downside Gamma
🔸Charm bearish > 5600, bullish between 5200-5600 and bearish < 5200
🔸Supportive, then volatile down moves.
Finally, Cboe-signed trade data:
It provides:
» Actual net long (short) per contract, by entity type
Market Makers are therefore:
» Long (short) whatever the Cboe says they are.
Dealer position, Cboe-signed data:
(no change)
Market impact (dynamic) after our trade:
(no change)
#3 is the only correct answer.
You're misled by 90% of the data services.
They use methods (1) or (2) and don't know, or don't care, that they're selling you noise.
We're just getting started.
You know the drill.
Retweet the thread & I'll keep going...
Most of the time, the market is in a "long gamma" position
Technically, this means that flows are absorbed by the hedging behavior of market makers- stabilizing the market overall and compressing ranges over time.
But compare today to yesterday?
If you're zoned in, this probably "feels" like negative gamma
but guess what...
it's still significantly positive overall.
It's just a major RELATIVE change in regime, comparing yesterday's totals to today's totals.
Everyone's talking about the iron condor martingale,
let's look at actual trades.
What follows is the series of trades leading up to Captain Condor's Christmas Eve blow-up.
They add context & teach two lessons:
1. The price isn't always "right" 2. Don't sell them blindly
First, let's define some things up front:
1. I have no interest in grave-dancing or judging David
2. Nothing I have is confidential. I was a market maker, accustomed to trading and warehousing flows from 0dte to several years.
3. All positioning data is official. No guesses
The basic strategy used involved 4 trade sizes deployed in "levels", with some levels occurring on "no-trade" days.
First trade, you sell 1 iron condor.
Without exposing their selection criteria...
strikes chosen often meant the group would collect $2 to sell 5-point wide put spread paired with a 5-point wide call spread, expiring the following day.
For the final series, the group had already "skipped" two days, deploying their first bet quantity at LEVEL 3.
In the following two images, you can see the cumulative customer positions for the SPXW Dec 19th PM contract (net long/short by strike and type).
This data is all exchange sourced and licensed, and the differences highlighted in the images are calculated based on the official position change between 4:00 pm et (cash close) and 4:30 pm et.
Historically, the group placed trades immediately after the close- and finished trading well before 4:30 pm.
The first trade involved selling the Dec 19th 6715 6720 Put Spread with the Dec 19th 6815 6820 Call Spread ~ 4,400 times and collecting $2 to do so (risking a loss of $3)
The fund's trade would be entirely safe if the S&P500 settled within the two short strikes of the condor: 6720 and 6815 - a 95 point range to work with.
UPSIDE TEST / LEVEL TO HOLD = 6790
Lose 6790 and risk a waterslide move back towards 6750-60 before you find any stability.
BALANCE = 6750 (MODERATE)
Opening positions have slight bias to long dealer gamma between 6740 and 6750, which will help flatten out any retracement from the AM spike towards 6790
DOWNSIDE TEST = 6740 >> 6700
Positioning gets very sparse to the downside. If we breakaway from the little bit of stability near 6750, then we look for price to hold above 6740.
IF we lose 6740 to the downside, it's another clean waterslide down to 6720 and a high probability the index will test 6 77777777777 before resolving directionally for the close.
VS3D GAMMA PROFILE
Thursday Dec 18 2025
Premarket gamma profile after the CPI release was already reflecting serious risk across the 67XX handle today.
Why?
Combination of 0DTE positions heavily biased towards customer hedges (dealer short options) as well as finding ourselves entrenched among large dealer shorts expiring tomorrow.
How much does Gamma matter?
A lot, when you use the right positions to model it correctly.
Here's what price has done so far today (intraday)
1 hour in and we've had multiple $25-35 moves in both directions: