S&P 500 Over Under Line, VIX at 19, Crude Oil Breakout to $104.50 and the Bitcoin Grind

VIX stays on high alert, now flirting with the 19 zone, not a full retreat back below 16 as we have seen the last several times the bear made the markets flinch.

Bull party RSVPs: NazQuack, yes. The S&P, yes. Uncle Dow and Uncle Russ, we’ll see.

The bull has hired a bouncy castle. The uncles brought a casserole and are sitting by the coats.

Dow and Rus don’t appear to want to join the attempted bull party, remain heavy, and the premarket is down ever so slightly. There are no big news events this week to drive the markets, so it’s a coin toss as to if there will continue to be this elevated price volatility on the stock indexes. Oil seems to be chugging along nicely though.

Scroll down for the S&P’s over under line, crude’s breakout target, and a butterfly that kept me biting my nails until the final bell.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures 7,728.25 (-0.15%). Down ever so slightly, well under the NATHs line.

• Uncle Dow futures 52,286 (+0.11%). Still heavy, under the falling averages.

• NazQuack futures 29,592.50. Off the NATHs, back under the line.

• Uncle Russ futures 2,741.8 (-0.11%). Heavy, sat at the lows of the move.

• Gold 4,136.3 (-0.58%). Still sliding.

• VIX 18.74 (+1.68%). Flirting with 19.

• Crude Oil 100.83 (+2.64%). Through $100.

• Bitcoin 81,237. Up a box, down a box.

SPX – Back to the “bear” bones.

Stripping back SPX to “bear” bones again, you can see the range mid point I noted yesterday as a regular reaction point this past few weeks, and right up to the 2 week VWAP line, which for me will serve as an over under line for the bull bear moves in the short term.

An over under line for the bull bear moves.

Crude Oil – Chugging along nicely.

Things that did what they were told this month:

1. Crude.

Crude oil did the thing we thought it would do, and has broken out of both the rising channel and the horizontal range. The bull breakout is on, and the target move up towards the $104.50 level.

The bull breakout is on.

Bitcoin – Boring again.

Bitcoin has taken up knitting. Knit one, purl one.

BTC has become boring again, and is grinding up a bit, down a bit. The PnF chart highlights this up a box, down a box grind. The situation has not changed, and waiting for a move to develop. This is the downside to directional trading, whereas if I were trading options on this in a similar way to the other charts, then I’d be cashing in a little through the grind.

Such is the way of things.

Premium Poppers & Wall of Wins – All down to the management and not the setups.

The Premium Poppers were a little mixed, and it was all down to the management and not the setups yesterday. I myself had one bull premarket and one bear on a 1st BO. As I was live trading these I was also explaining that this type of two back to back setups are often a caution we will see a rocky, spikey, whippy day.

I locked in a small loss on my first trade, and left the second trade open to see if I could manage it better.

It’s a recent observation that I’ve noted on and off this year. I really just didn’t want to prematurely manage the trade. Normally when it goes one way then the other it should run, but then a 3rd flip n flop could see a 4th and so on, so I’ve seen price turn around or grind sideways multiple times. So I skipped the 3rd trades and 2nd attempt at a bull move (when including the premarket data), and waited to manage, or see if I could manage better, to prevent over trading.

For most of the session the premarket trade, which was transformed, was actually looking like it might land on the bullseye on 7700, which would have yielded a net profit. As it turns out, price pushed just to the second trade’s short strike for almost a max profit, and a small net profit on the day.

Fingernails at the open: 10. At the close: 0. P&L: green.

But certainly a nail biting day waiting for the butterfly to open up its profit tent, one nearly and a definitely by the final bell.

The group was a little mixed too:

• Don E.: “unexpected reversal, stopped out both SPX and RUT, not a good day for trading”

• Don E.: “offset the SPX loss with 50% win on BO2”

• James D.: “I’m holding on for the bear….”

• ehvpsd: “Need a spike up…”

• Scott K.: “Sat out today”

• ehvpsd: “Be glad you did. My SPX 3rd ORB turned out to be a loser. Tomorrow’s another day…”

• James D.: “Phew, that was some ride…. took the 1st PP breakout on RUT and SPX and would love to say they ended up winners but thanks to transformers and market only a tiny loss, which given the market yesterday I count as a win! Fingers crossed for a smoother ride today.”

Well done all for posting the highs and the lows.

Meme of the Day:

Trade well,

T2 Markets

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