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Educational material, not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Options involve significant risk and are not suitable for every investor. These are past examples chosen to illustrate a reading; they are not typical results, and past behavior of any setup does not guarantee future results.

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Introduction:

This is a guide on how to spot potential higher timeframe trend shifts on the indices. We’ll be looking primarily at the VEX positioning rather than the GEX positioning, because it shows how dealers are positioned for the sessions ahead.

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Bearish Positioning for the Week of 11/7/2025:

  • VEX was looking toppy on SPY and QQQ. We can determine this because of a lack of accumulation to the upside nodes.
  • 685 SPY was a strong gatekeeper node with very minimal upside accumulation at 690. Price had been delivered from 690 a few days earlier, which made a return to 690 less likely. 11/3/2025 Pre market outlook on SPY: Price was delivered from 690 a few days prior, with a massive gatekeeper node at 685 preventing upside.
  • QQQ had a similar outlook as SPY, with a king node at 635 and high accumulation into the next few days. Similar to SPY, we observed that same stair-stepping pattern. This is a significant confluence to consider.
Key point: when the indexes show little to no upside accumulation, it can be a sign of a potential “market top”. Notice how on SPY we had multiple levels of resistance with no signs of continuation higher. SPY 690 was showing a hard wall, with a big gatekeeper node at 685. With very little upside accumulation, the nodes growing to the downside were where the map pointed.

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Reading this bearish bias:

VEX positioning shows how dealers are postured in the days ahead. With a bearish posture like this one, traders focus on how price reacts at node rejections. Keep in mind that maps can shuffle at a moment’s notice, whether that’s intraday or for the days ahead. An invalidation of this bias would simply be the opposite of how it was formed: higher accumulation at higher strikes, dissipation of values at lower strikes, and stronger positioning closer to the money.

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What happened next:

In this case, SPY sold down to 661, with QQQ tapping its weekly low at 598, a nearly 3% move from peak to trough.

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Quiz:

  1. Which of these shows how dealers are positioned?
    1. An analyst report claiming that the indices are due for a pullback.
    2. $5m in put options being bought on SPY
    3. Stairstep VEX exposure to the downside, with comparatively little accumulation to the upside.
    4. Your fib levels show that the market is overextended.
  1. Stairstep VEX exposure. Dealer positioning is expressed through the Greeks.