Market Review
GLOBEX
| (ESH20:CME) GLOBEX Session | (ESH20:CME) Day Session |
| High 3360.75 | Opening Print: 3353.75 |
| Low: 3327.00 | High 3382.50 |
| Volume: 196,000 | Low: 3353.50 |
| ES Settlement 3370.00 | |
| Total Volume 1.70 Million |
S&P 500 RECAP – Trade Date 08/12/ 2020
#ES Money Maker Chart
FAANG Sticks Their Fangs Out
After an overnight rally that recovered more than half of Tuesday’s losses, the S&P 500 futures opened yesterday’s cash session at 3353.75, up 24.25 handles, made a low of the day a tick below the open, and then rallied strongly early in the session pushing up to an early morning 3374.50 high before 10:00, and then to a late morning high of 3377.75 after 11:00. The ES went on to pull back into the noon hour, retreating 12.50 handles down to 3367.25 before rallying into 1:00, and then pushing up to a high of the day of 3382.50 just before 2:30. Into the close the S&P’s traded marginally lower, printing 3368.75 late-day, a 13.75 pullback before settling at 3373.75, up 44.25 handles or +1.28%.
In terms of the ES’s overall tone, the NQ led the markets higher. After several days of rotating out of the big tech names like FAANG the money poured back into the tech sector. At one pint the NQ futures were up almost 3%. In terms of the day’s overall trade, volume was LOW at 1.7 million contracts traded.
Economic Calendar
Closing Prices
In the Tradechat Room
MiM
A big up day with some controlled selling into the close. MIM showing a small buy going into the 15:50 reveal with a 1.1B buy revealed but no real breadth with only 58% of our symbols having a buy. Profit-taking sold the market down about 12 points from the pre MOC high.
Questions? 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).
Disappointed in Flordia’s new case numbers, I have not heard any anecdotal information to explain the turn up in cases. Florida is the only state of the three that I have hospitalizations numbers for and they, too, turned up and are hitting the highs of ten days ago, around 500/day. It looks like the turn down we were looking for is now actually just a pause. As schools open we expect testing to increase.
Texas is the only one of the three to be showing a downturn as California eats through its case backlog and looks to be returning where it started from. It looks to us as if the California data issue will not affect the death count, it is a bad count of testing results.
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.
At this point, we can’t say that new deaths are turning down. It has been a rough start to the week and the big numbers usually come in today and tomorrow. Florida and CA did just sneak in below the under number yesterday so all eyes are on FL around 10:40 am ET today.
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 | 5,409 / 8,109 | 225 / 213 | 7,650 | 120 |
| Texas | 8,706 / 6,200 | 236 / 324 | 7,598 | 306 |
| California | 5,295 / 11,645 | 202 / 180 | 5,258 | 166 |
| New York | 636 / 700 | 4 / 15 | 518 | 6 |
Use today’s number 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
Nasdaq Comes Charging Back
It would be hard for you to know this but just before the ES opened I posted this in the MrTopStep forum: IMPRO: Dboy :(9:28:29 AM): I think you have to tread lightly on selling the open. Well, I didn’t sell the open but I did sell the early rally and got nowhere. After a few small trades and watching the NQ rip, I bought the NQ and did ok but then the afternoon was a grind. While there is no doubt that ‘thin to win’ is real low volumes can also be dangerous. New highs on low volume are considered a negative sign. I am not sure that’s as important as it used to be but that is probably tied to all the quantitative easing and the government stimulus. As the old saying goes, don’t fight the FED!
Our view, we are in the final trading sessions of the dog days of summer and clearly fewer people are trading. We live in a world of ‘risk-on / risk-off’ and while I do not see any major sell-offs coming I am concerned over the lack of any pullbacks. Additionally, my timing has been off. Our lean is to buy the pullbacks and look for the PitBull’s Thursday / Friday low before the week before the August options expiration. Lastly, the NQ may have lost traction late in the day but I don’t think yesterday’s tech buying spree was a one-day event and there are tons of buy stops to run above 3382.50 which go straight up to 3408-3412.
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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As always, please use protective buy and sell stops when trading futures and options.
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