The macro waves we began to see last week continue to swell as we head into trade this morning. Late yesterday afternoon The Russians significantly hiked their interest rates. The Nasdaq shrugged the news off initially but around 6am, amid the Russian markets trading down significantly, sell flow rushed onto the tape.
The resulting globex auction carries the second highest volume dating back to July 2012 and a 2nd sigma range. In short, statistically this was a highly abnormal session.
As we approach US trade, prices are trading higher and retesting Monday’s low print at 4141. I suspect this level will be of interest in early morning trade, especially as it also nearly marks the globex session midpoint.
The market is heading lower. It is doing so in a process we call discovery in auction theory. The market will continue to head lower until it finds buyers. You can now simplify your job down to answering one question—is the market done finding buyers?
Answering that question is a matter of observing characteristics of a quality swing low and making an educated guess. There are no guarantees in trading.
Taking to the charts, yesterday appears to be a continuation of Friday’s selling where we trading out the week on the lows. Once it breached the very low volume node near the middle of the breached volume pocket, our expectation was for price to continue to the high volume node on the other end. This is basic pocket play.
The responsive buyers were active at this level (about 4144.75) and produced a decent looking low. I initiated a weekly call option in NFLX right around this level and it immediately caught a strong bid as well.
However, the session moved forward, and the buyers were unable to defend their bounce and instead gave back nearly all of it by the close. This was a clue. If the market had truly found a buyer here then we likely should not be back down near the lows. I cut NFLX for this reason, as it too was hovering near my entry.
Overnight price breached the next very low volume pocket. Whether sell flow pushes prices below 4115 during RTH will be my clue regarding lower prices. Swing high/low are often not established during globex, thus sellers have the edge.
My primary expectation is for and open auction outside of range where prices to attempt higher early on. Whether buyers can reclaim Monday’s range (4141) and the overnight mid (4143.50) will be important. If they can, we might see a test of the overnight high 4176.50. Otherwise we continue trading lower to test the pocket mid at 4115 and if that breaches then my expectation is for trade to continue down though the pocket.
The HVN on the bottom of this pocket is not as peaked as the one we experienced yesterday, thus trade could become a bit muddy in this region. 4053.75 is the ultimate target on the pocket fill but we may see responsive buyers before then.
Hypo two, with an elevated expectancy, is and opening drive down. This would take out the 4115 pocket mid early and work down to the 4053.75 target quickly. In this case we may blow through the level before finding a responsive bid.
Third hypo is buyers sustain Monday’s range, take out the overnight high (4176.50) and make a run for 4200.
You can see these observations and levels indicated below:
