Market Review
GLOBEX
| (ESH20:CME) GLOBEX Session | (ESH20:CME) Day Session |
| High 3393.50 | Opening Print: 3378.50 |
| Low: 3356.75 | High 3396.25 |
| Volume: 312,000 | Low: 3374.75 |
| ES Settlement 3392.50 | |
| Total Volume 1.17 Milliion |
S&P 500 RECAP – Trade Date 08/21/ 2020
#ES Money Maker Chart
#ES Late Friday RIP
After an active 36.75 handle range in the overnight session, the S&P 500 futures opened Friday at 3378.50, the middle of the Globex range, down 2.50 handles, made a low on the open of 3374.75, and then rallied up to 3387.25 for the first hour high. After an 8.75 handle pullback, the ES resumed its buy pressure, making its way up to 3389.00 for what would hold as the morning high just before 10:00. The rest of the morning saw a sideways to lower chop down to 3378.00, an 11.00 handle pullback.
Buying momentum picked back up late in the morning, stalled out at noon, but then picked up mid-afternoon as the benchmark equity index futures made a new high of day just before 1:00 and continued to climb in the afternoon, pushing up to the high of day at 3396.25 in the final hour before trailing down to settle the day at 3392.50, up 11.75 handles or +0.35%.
In terms of trading, it was a thin-to-win type price action with a late Friday RIP. Buyers at the open and then in the afternoon received the most benefits. Total volume was a light 1.17 million contracts.
Economic Calendar
Closing Prices
In the Tradechat Room
MiM
Sorry about the chart. The MOC on Friday was about 1.5B to sell. We did sell into the MOC with early sellers and the lack of breadth on the MOC had us shoot up 3 points and close higher for the day.
estions? Please email me: Marlin@mrtopstep.com
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Covid-19
We continue to track Covid-19 across all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico to gain a better understanding of what is happening. While detected cases continue to expand, we are not seeing the equivalent expansion in hospitalizations and deaths. Our table uses 7-day averages and takes a 5-day linear regression slope in order to detect changes as quickly as possible. We score each state by a normalized slope and ranking in each category (infected, admitted, and deaths).
Great progress over the weekend and we expect that to carry throughout the week. Daily new cases are down 66% from their July high in Florida. Texas is showing a new move lower from a plateau and California is putting in a lower low. All good signs as we head into a new week. We expect the new cases to fall low enough to be headline news as India and South America make headlines.
We continue to focus on our top 3, Florida (20M pop), Texas (30M), and California (40M) looking at daily deaths, but more importantly, changes in the count.
The lower new cases have finally begun to show up in lower new deaths for Florida, we would expect to be around 100 by the end of the week. Texas is just bending and California is still too early to show up but next week at this time we should be showing progress there, too.
India is in real trouble now as the cases continue to grow and the numbers will be large. World daily deaths have started to fall with the waning of deaths from the USA, that will soon be replaced by India and other global countries and we expect to see that number start rising again by as early as next week.
Over / Under
These are the over/under numbers for today. In order to push the 7-day average lower, today’s reported numbers need to be lower than the target number. A new case or death number that is higher will increase the 7-day average.
Yesterday’s over/under numbers and actual are also in the table.
| Yesterday | Yesterday | Today | Today | |
| State | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths |
| Florida | 3,779 / 2,974 | 107 / 51 | 2,678 | 87 |
| Texas | 6.744 / 4,398 | 143 / 104 | 7,368 | 51 |
| California | 7,873 / 6,777 | 77 / 146 | 6,469 | 18 |
| New York | 607 / 572 | 6 / 6 | 408 | 6 |
Use today’s numbers to watch the releases to determine the trend.
To use our table, go to https://t2r4.com/cv19/views. Each column is sortable and if you click on a cell you will get a time-based chart of the state.
Wear your masks!
Stay Home!
Chart of the Day
Our View:
#ES New- All-time Contract Highs
With the ES up 12 of 15 sessions in August, I think last night’s rally up to 3401.75 was somewhat anticlimactic. For the last 6 weeks (maybe longer) I have said ‘ES 3400 ON TAP’ only to see the futures lose momentum and pull back. I guess in the big scheme of things the ES has rallied over 1,200 points and has had to do a lot of low-volume ‘back and fill’ to get to its new high. It’s been an epic battle that has totally destroyed the short sellers and all the scare tactics about August didn’t appear. I recently made a comparison of the 2000 tech bubble but maybe the correlation we should be looking at is October 19, 1987, Black Monday. With the presidential election in full gear and marches and riots hitting every big city in the nation, October could be a very scary time for the markets. While I do not know when the ES will start to reverse, I think we will know when the time comes but until then I am going to continue to buy the pullbacks and look for higher prices.
Our view, the low volume grind is tough but what’s tougher is being a seller. While last week saw $6.6 billion in stock market outflows it doesn’t seem to be stopping the markets from going up. Hell, if I had bought stocks 4 or 5 months ago I would be selling, too. Our lean, the recent patterns of selling the early rallies and buying the pullbacks seems to be the best trade. Yes, the ES traded above 3400 but I don’t think that’s going to be high.
Danny Riley is a 39-year veteran of the CME trading floor. He has helped run one of the largest S&P desks on the floor of the CME Group since 1985.
Market Vitals Technical Analysis
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