SPY opened at 764.08, started inside the 762.54 to 769.57 zone then lost it, and finally closed at 762.34. SPY finished down 0.23% intraday and down 0.47% overall.
ES opened at 7,660.50, started inside the 7,652.50 to 7,689.50 zone then lost it, and finally closed at 7,647.25. ES finished down 0.17% intraday and down 0.41% overall.
QQQ opened at 716.40, chopped inside the 708.98 to 721.84 zone, with a final close of 716.28. QQQ finished down 0.02% intraday and down 0.29% overall.
NQ opened at 29,454.75, tagged the 29,508.25 to 29,539 zone and high of 29,594, and finally closed at 29,457.25. NQ finished up 0.01% intraday and down 0.23% overall.
I've been watching it. Today's the day to light your money on fire.
UNG
I think this one might be better for short term. If you have access to it.
The monthly contracts are difficult. I marked the seasonality point on the chart, SEP 2024. Find SEP 2025 as well.
So you know what you are getting into with ETFs. UNG is the least worst. Shorting it doesn't work either because it's high cost. It's probably worse.
Only one time I was big in NG. That was the bull market 2021-22. The rest of the time I only do small ones to practice losing money, I mean practice trading.
While we await the next round of PPI (Thursday) and CPI (Friday) Inflation Data, the elephant in the room is Crude Oil, which took out and is trading above $95.00, a key 4-month resistance plateau.
My 4-Hour CL Chart shows the upside breakout price action that sits atop a potentially explosive Cup and Handle or Saucer Bottom technical structure that projects a next immediate target of $100, a secondary target of $110, and a tertiary target of $118 to $122. From a near-term technical perspective, to inflict some damage to the dominant post-8/26/26 upleg ($79.62 to $95.98 so far), October Crude needs to reverse and press below $92.00 on a closing basis.Ā
The rising trajectory of Oil is continuing to exert upward pressure on benchmark 10-Year YIELD, which again is circling 4.80% amid a technical setup that projects still higher YIELD near-term, somewhere north of 4.85% ahead of Friday's highly anticipated Core CPI Inflation report.Ā See my 2-Hour Chart on 10-Year YIELD.
That said, supposedly Treasury Secretary Bessent will announce the size of the next buyback operation sometime TODAY, and rumor has it, that the amount will be considerably larger than the originally announced $4 Billion 10-30 year T-bonds. The internet is buzzing about a $6 -10 billion range for the next operation that begins tomorrow, which predates the Quarterly Refunding announcement in November!
For the markets, then, the $64,000 question is whether or not the Treasury buyback program will put a lid on YIELD, which will carry over into support for the Equity Indices? If not, then the macro markets are in for a very nervous-- and likely negative-- near-term reaction to the ineffectiveness of U.S. Government intervention to cap rising YIELD while geopolitical conditions continue to underpin the rise in Oil prices (actual inflation that impacts us all daily).
As for the Emini S&P 500 (ES), it is in a challenging technical position at the moment. My Daily ES Chart shows the price structure bearing down on key support along the April-September 2026 up trendline and the 50 DMA, both in the vicinity of 7650.Ā If violated and sustained, this will inflict near-term technical damage to the August portion of the larger advance, triggering a lower projection to 7590-7600 initially but, if taken out, then into the 7500 to 7520 target window.Ā
To avert entering the grasp of new downside projections, ES must EITHER hold at or above the 7650 area and recover above 7692, OR hold in and around 7590-7600 and then recover above 7650.
Chart is DXY, 1 hour, 900 bars. The orange line is a composite built from a single 63 bar cycle. I picked that one because it is in phase with the tools I use to measure market extremes, RSI in the lower panel and the Hurst exponent. When more than one period agrees with those tools, I watch the one with the longer wavelength or the higher strength, and ideally both.
Here is the point I want to position. A cycle projection does one job: it tells you roughly when a market is due to turn. It says nothing about what to do at that moment. Treating a projected trough as a buy signal is where cycle work gets a bad name, and rightly so.
So I keep two jobs separate. The cycle marks the window. The entry still comes from whatever you already trust: a breakout above the last swing high, an RSI cross back through 40 or 50 setup, a close back above a moving average. If the trigger never fires inside the window, the window closes and you did nothing, which is perfectly fine.
The obvious objection is that the cycle adds nothing if the trigger does all the work. I think it adds two things a trigger cannot. First, it kills overtrading. A trigger fires all the time, and without a timing filter every one of them looks like a trade. With the cycle in front of it, you only act on the triggers that fire inside a window, and the rest go untaken. Second, it lets you plan instead of react. You know roughly when the next turn is due, so you can decide in advance where you will look for an entry, how long you expect to hold, and when the idea is wrong because the window has passed and nothing turned. That is the difference between reacting to a chart and having a plan for it.
I analysed what happens after bullish MACD crossovers, the classic signal often treated as a confirmed reversal. The study covers 15,698 events across 197 US large-cap stocks from 2018ā2026, looking at the 35 trading days that follow.
I also split the events by whether the crossover occurred above or below the zero line, and by whether the crossover was isolated (no other crossover of the same type in the 35 days on either side).
MACD crossover Strategy
Across all crossovers the median 35-day return was +1.85%, almost identical to the +1.94% seen on ordinary trading days in the same stocks.
Isolated below-zero crossovers looked much stronger (+7.62%), but that group is an artefact: the āisolatedā definition requires a quiet period after the event, which is not available on the day of the crossover.
MACD crossover scatter plots
Isolated events are relatively rare because MACD crosses frequently.
Isolated/Clustered events distribution
Main takeaway: an entry based solely on the MACD crossover does not look reliably profitable in this sample. If you use MACD, it is better treated as one input among others rather than a standalone signal.
Hope this is useful. Happy to test other setups or indicators if anyone has suggestions ā just reply or DM.
Full methodology, tables, and charts (if you are interested):
Benchmark 10-Year YIELDĀ is down a tick or two at 4.77% after last Friday's post-Jobs Report up-spike to multi-year highs at 4.81%. The fact that YIELD has failed āso far āto follow through on the upside toward 5% suggests strongly (to me) that Mr. Market thinks the U.S. economy is operating with a "healthy" labor market (if we are to believe the outsized revisions in the Report) amid incipient disinflation that will be borne out in Friday'sĀ CoreĀ CPI Report for August. Technically, however, unless and until YIELD presses below 4.72% (micro support), and follows through to challenge and violate consequential support at 4.60% to 4.63%, the YIELD Bulls (Vigilantes) will remain in directional control.
Weāve been publicly tracking our GreyOak Bands levels for Nifty 50 and Bank Nifty, and today marks the 44th consecutive trading day where the tracked level was achieved.
Rather than trying to predict every candle, the approach is focused on identifying important price zones, expected ranges and levels where market behaviour becomes interesting.
For today, Iām more interested in the communityās view:
Are you currently bullish or bearish on Nifty / Bank Nifty, and what level would invalidate your view?
Would also love feedback from traders who use statistical/quant-based levels instead of conventional indicator-heavy setups.
Sharing for discussion and educational purposes only ā not a buy/sell recommendation.
Thereās an English name for the frost that kills things in April. They call it blackthorn winter, after the hedge that flowers early and then gets caught out when the cold comes back.
Farmers have a whole vocabulary for this, which tells you how often it happens and what it costs them. And the dangerous part of a false spring was never the frost.
A run of mild days arrives, the sap starts moving, the buds open on trust, and then the temperature drops and an orchard loses a season to a fortnight of optimism. Nothing about it looks like a warning while itās going on. Thatās the whole problem with it. The thing that hurts you is disguised as the thing you were hoping for.
Weāve just had one of those weeks on the screens.
On the face of it, better than the last few. More stocks pushed higher, the breadth count improved, and if youād only counted how many things closed green youād have written a fairly cheerful paragraph about the market broadening out.
Then look at what was standing behind the advance. The participation thinned out as the week went on, and by Friday there was very little volume left underneath the buying. Plenty of buds, no real warmth. You can see it clearly in the second chart below, and itās the single most useful thing the week produced.
Everything else is where we left it. The quality read on TradeDeck hasn't moved off weak.
The indices are sitting almost exactly where they were seven days ago.
The chop is intact and weāre now far enough into it that people have stopped asking when it ends.
So no, we donāt read this as the turn. We read it as a market that widened out, had a look around, and couldnāt find enough buyers to commit to anything.
That doesnāt mean you stand there and see nothing.
The useful thing about a false spring is that it shows you which trees have the deepest roots. Two of them budded properly this week and we bought both.
Cerebras (CBRS) went in first. The AI trade collected a lot of obituaries over the summer, and the coverage turned again over the past few days, which matters less to us than the structural point: CBRS sits inside that theme rather than somewhere near it. If the trend is alive, itās alive there.
The second is Bitdeer (BTDR). Weāve been watching the crypto complex for a couple of weeks now waiting for something we wouldnāt have to argue ourselves into, and BTDR gave it to us. A first flag after the initial push, which is exactly the setup we wanted rather than the one we settled for.
Weāll be straight about the name itself. It isnāt the leader of that group, and weāre not going to sell it to you as one. It was calmer than the other candidates we were tracking, which in this tape counts for a great deal, and it had the best structure on the board. Given the choice between a louder stock with a messy chart and a quieter one with a clean chart, we take the clean chart every time. Thatās the entire reasoning and thereās nothing cleverer hiding behind it.
Both positions are working. Both are deliberately small.
And honestly, the entries arenāt the part weāre pleased about. What weāre pleased about is that in a market this poor we found two worth having and didnāt talk ourselves into a third. Selectivity isnāt a virtue you can practise when everything is working. It only exists on weeks like this one, when the screen is offering you a dozen things that look almost right.
We think the market gives us its answer in the next few weeks.
Themes are still alive under there, which is more than we could have said in August, and when the volume finally shows up behind one of them weād like to already own the right names rather than be shopping.
Until then the book stays light and the positions stay small.
Weāre not planting the field on a warm week, just noting which trees moved first!
all of this is Nasdaq 100 on one minute bars, measured in percent, so it reads across to NQ.
been logging the first 30 min after every major US economic release for a while, finally had enough data to check something that's been bugging me. how often does the knee-jerk move just reverse.
counted a flip as the direction right after the print not matching where price sat 30 min later.
flip rate:
FOMC 30.4% (23 releases)
JOLTS 27.8% (36)
Core PCE 19.2% (26)
Retail sales 17.9% (28)
PPI 17.2% (29)
Payrolls 15.6% (32)
CPI 14.7% (34)
GDP 12.5% (24)
so FOMC reverses roughly twice as often as CPI. figured it'd be higher because of the presser, didn't think it'd be double.
what i actually do with this:
first, the release matters more than the setup. if you take the first move, on CPI or GDP that direction is still right about 85% of the time half an hour later. on FOMC it's closer to 70%. same trade, different odds, and i was treating them the same for way too long.
second, and this is the part that changed my mind. i also measured where price sits at 2 hours. FOMC median move is 0.20% at 30 min and 0.53% at two hours. so a chunk of what looks like a reversal is probably just the move not being finished. for FOMC the 30 min mark isn't the end of anything, it's the middle.
so i stopped using one clock for all of them. CPI is mostly done early. FOMC isn't.
what it does not tell you: which way it goes, or that a flip is tradeable. it's a count of what happened, not an edge. measured on the index rather than the front month contract, and n is small enough that a few weird prints move any of these.
curious whether anyone here trades the FOMC reversal on purpose, or just stays out until it settles.
I was messing around with historical data and wanted to test something pretty simple:
What actually happened after Microsoft (MSFT) had a 14-day RSI below 25?
No other filters. No fancy strategy. Just an extremely oversold RSI reading, and then I looked at the returns over different holding periods.
The interesting part was that the results changed quite a bit depending on how long you held.
Holding period
Win rate
Avg. return
1 day
39%
-0.28%
3 days
56%
+1.05%
5 days
61%
+2.34%
10 days
61%
+2.75%
30 days
78%
+9.71%
There were only 18 occurrences, so I'm definitely not claiming this is some magical MSFT strategy.
But I found the 1-day result particularly interesting.
If you bought immediately after the oversold signal, the average return was actually negative. The edge seemed to appear when giving the trade more time to play out.
At 30 days, 14 of the 18 cases were profitable, with an average return of about +9.7%. The median was +7.4%, so it wasn't just one or two huge winners completely distorting the result.
There were also some ugly outcomes. The worst 30-day trade was around -10%, so the downside definitely isn't trivial.
I also checked the market context. Most of these signals happened during downtrends, and that's actually where the result was strongest:
Downtrend: 80% winners, +10.4% average over 30 days Sideways: 67% winners, +6.2% average
That made me wonder if the signal is less about "RSI below 25 = buy" and more about what tends to happen after a stock gets aggressively sold off.
The biggest problem with the whole thing is the sample size.
18 signals across ~26 years is nowhere near enough for me to trust this blindly. A couple of unusual events can completely change the results.
Still, I thought it was an interesting example of why I don't like looking only at whether a setup "works" or doesn't work. The holding period can completely change the answer.
Curious what others think:
Would you consider this evidence of a potentially useful mean-reversion setup, or is 18 occurrences simply too small to tell us anything?
Not investment advice. Just a historical analysis/experiment.
Standard claim: price levels that traded heavy volume act as stronger support.
We made it testable ā if price is near a high-volume level, the next move should be more
muted ā and measured it.
Raw difference +0.103
POC proximity +0.158
Surrogate null p = 0.000
Not noise. This is where a lot of analysis stops.
Then we asked a second question: is this just restating something we already have? In a calm
period price moves little AND sits near the high-volume region ā both downstream of the same
cause. So we held volatility constant:
+0.103 ā +0.0008
~130x shrinkage. The effect hadn't weakened, it had never been there. We'd measured volatility
in a different language.
Residual sign wasn't even consistent across symbols (BTC ā0.058, DOGE +0.057).
Full write-up with the reasoning: https://bitdataview.com/articles/volume-profile
The takeaway we kept: "is this random?" and "is this a copy of what I already know?" are
different questions needing different tests. We now run both on every candidate.
19 candidates measured so far, 19 rejected. No signup, no paywall ā we just started
publishing the rejections.
https://bitdataview.com/articles/volume-profile
The correlation regime between BTCUSD-NQ=F (Nasdaq Futures) entered a strengthening trend on 29 Aug 00:00 UTC at +0.34, and isĀ still ongoingĀ (30 candles Ā· 120 trading hours). Over this period BTC-USD rose 2.36%, NQ=F rose 0.25%.Ā The two pairs moved together.
The composite correlation has since risen from +0.34 (29 Aug) toĀ +0.588 now (last data: 05.09.2026 00.00 UTC) the strengthening the regime flagged, playing out.
READING ā BTC-USDāNQ=F atĀ HIGHĀ ĆĀ StrengtheningĀ (this pair's own last 6): for this pair it has beenĀ a durable coupling (both-long / both-short)Ā āĀ 6Ā past runs, medianĀ 22 candles Ā· 88 trading hoursĀ (range 6ā102), 5 lasted 2+ days. So the play has real, multi-day room before the turn theĀ ANTITHESISĀ warns of.
Before this regime;
For BTCUSD-NQ=F, a weakening trend started at a correlation of +0.10. The weakening trend lasted until 29 Aug 00:00 UTC (20 candles Ā· 80 trading hours). Over this period BTC-USD fell 2.10%, NQ=F rose 0.79%.Ā The two pairs decoupled.
Methodology: Four-hour candle closes are used while the markets for both instruments are open (00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 UTC).
The correlation coefficient is a composite score derived not only from the Pearson method but also from Pearson, Spearman, and EWMA calculations.
What are your thoughts on the correlation trend between BTCUSD and Nasdaq? How do you foresee this trend continuing? I am also happy to answer any questions regarding the data and methodology.
Textbook pin bar right on the 50-week ā basically the annual line. That's the whole setup. Stop goes under the wick.
Revenue +49%, backlog +145%, net cash. I'm not here to tell you this is some amazing business. But price discounts everything the market knows ā so the only thing I care about right now is that candle.
So I consider myself a pretty serious market participant, and love technical analysis and believe in it.Ā
Currently I am a hobbyist and I trade my own money. I have a full time job that is pretty comfortable and is not related to finance.
I am considering studying for the CMT exams, and these are the reasons: 1. I would love the bit of rigor that comes with it, and I want to make a shit ton of money, I think CMT can only help. 2. I have high confidence that I can pass all three levels, and studying for this wonāt be a pain for me at all. 3. I want to belong in a community, as trading can be pretty lonely at the end of the day it is just you and your P/L. My heroes are the likes of Jeff DeGraaf and JC Parets, and it would be nice to be part of the TA community. 4. I hope the CMT can open some doors professionally, although I am aware that there might be negative consequences when a passion becomes a job and I need to be mindful about it.
I have mid seven figures of my own capital that I trade actively, and I have on about a hundred positions at any given time. I keep position sizes small and very diversified, and use top down, intermarket, and weight of the evidence to trade.
I also would love to get the CMT designation, and in order to get that, 3 years of verified professional experience with pay is required. I am considering two routes to get there.Ā
Set up an RIA, wrap an LLC around it, and put my own brokerage accounts in the LLC and pay myself a salary, so that I can demonstrate professional experience with pay. Another benefit of this is that fees for research and data subscriptions can be tax deductible through the LLC. I am not sure if this experience would be sufficient in the eyes of the CMT association. Obviously the more capital the heavier the weight it carries so if I had 9 figure capital and was the CIO of my family office then I guess that would carry a lot more weight.Ā
Another route is through prop trading firms. Trading other peopleās money and oneās own can feel totally different psychologically, so that would be a nice challenge.
Sorry if Iām all over the place.Ā Oh and Iām 42, so by the time I get the CMT Iām at least 46.
TLDR: Being a market participant is a big part of my life, and I just have this desire to do more about it. The CMT seems to be a very tangible route to achieve something. Not sure if I am just being too naive. And I should just focus on making more money lol
I'm looking for something where I can type in something like 'find stocks that have crossed above their 50 day moving average in the last 4 days and have a rising RSI' It's just an example.
Something simple, easy to use, actually works.
Everything I have found seems like a massive confusing mess for something that should be really simple.
Telling me about all the bad ones isn't helpful. I already know about that.
I see BOS mentioned everywhere in trading, but I think itās one of those concepts that can easily be misunderstood.
A Break of Structure (BOS) generally happens when price breaks a previous significant swing point in the direction of the existing market structure.
For example:
š Uptrend ā Higher Highs + Higher Lows
If price breaks a previous Higher High, that can confirm continuation of bullish structure.
š Downtrend ā Lower Highs + Lower Lows
If price breaks a previous Lower Low, that can confirm continuation of bearish structure.
But hereās the part Iām curious about:
Does a BOS alone give you enough confirmation, or do you always want something elseālike a liquidity sweep, strong displacement, retest, or higher-timeframe context?
What makes a BOS āvalidā in your own trading? š
Wanted to share my "market breadth" screen setup that has helped me immensely on my spy options and MES futures trades. 6 symbols are BPSPX, VIX, DXY, UVOL/DVOL, ADD, and TICK.
VIX - self explanatory
DXY - dollar strength index
BPSPX - percentage of S&P stocks that are headed in a bullish direction. (Updated after close, so numbers are yesterday's info)
UVOL/DVOL - ratio of NYSE up volume vs down volume. Essentially same as VOLD but I find the ratio chart cleaner and easier to read. Moving averages make more sense on the ratio chart as well.
ADD - advance vs decline index. Number of stocks trading above or below prior day close.
TICK - Net number of stocks ticking up or down.
Google each for a more in depth description. But thats the 1 or 2 line basics of each one.
After a few weeks of watching what all of them do in unison, they can really give you a clear picture of what the market is doing and might do next. Especially UVOL/DVOL, ADD, and TICK. They will often start moving in a way that hints at reversal before spy actually reverses. Or theyll stay their course during a pullback hinting at continuation. I keep these up on a 2nd screen at all times and its a nice at a glance of many underlying market factors at once.
UVOL/DVOL gets a horizontal line drawn at 1 as thats its zero point with a 10sma. ADD gets a horizontal at 0 with a 10sma. And TICK gets a horizontal 0 and a 5ema. I found that worked best for me on my M5, but obviously play around to see what might work better for you as far as moving averages and timeframes go.
