S&P 500 Daily Trade Plan: Balance at the Edges & The 7573 Breakout Decision
A detailed ES & VIX plan for July 2nd, breaking down the 7573.25 breakout ceiling, the 7527.00 true midpoint pivot, and the 7492.50 floor — all into severe NFP news.
SCHEDULED NEWS
OPTIONS VOLITILITY LEVELS
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Morning everyone. Today is Thursday, July 2nd — the last trading day of the week ahead of the July Fourth holiday. Yesterday’s trade plan was absolutely phenomenal. We’ve been calling for the highs between 7573.00 and 7576.00 for the past few days, and yesterday we got exactly that: the high played to perfection in the late afternoon and brought us down well over 50 points to our final target of 7527.00. It required extreme patience, but the plan once again played out exactly as expected, providing pure alpha for everyone who exercised the discipline. Congratulations to all who took advantage — a phenomenal day for subscribers and especially the inner circle. Now we get to do it all over again.
We come into the morning holding 7527.00 all night, drifting sideways and accepting value, which is a huge indication we could be building for a push higher. Right now we’re moving sideways inside two full days’ ranges — Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s — and we find ourselves directly in the middle of both at the time of this writing. That makes direction difficult, because we’re in balance: there’s no edge in the middle, and our edge is in the edges.
A Note on Today’s Market:
News: We have SEVERE Red Tag news this morning — some of the biggest we’ve had in a long time. Non-farm Employment Change (huge), Average Hourly Earnings month-over-month, and the Unemployment Rate all drop at 8:30 a.m. pre-market. These massive headline events only come once a month and are some of the most volatile of the entire month. This news is sure to create vibrations, so let the dust settle before engaging.
Volume: Relative Volume is -14%, but it’s essentially a moot point today. With only a ~48-point range left and massive Red Tag news on deck, I wouldn’t give this number much weight — it will more than likely change rapidly once the news drops after 8:30.
Range: Expected range of 85.5 points, with a total overnight range so far of 37.5 points. That leaves us approximately 48 points in the tank above or below the overnight high or low — plenty of room to catch at least one or two higher-probability trades to finish the week strong.
Gamma: We are still in Negative Gamma, though the flip has shifted down to 7620. Dealers are still hedging to the downside, and we can expect volatility in both directions. This is a key element today: we remain under the significant leg to the all-time highs, so dealers have every right to hedge lower — but things can change quickly once we approach that level, depending on the direction of the news.
Trend: We’re still down on the Daily (the main leg down at 7573.25), but we’ve gained on the 4-Hour and 1-Hour and maintained those gains overnight. That tilts me toward a cautiously bullish stance into the news — while fully respecting that severe headlines and Negative Gamma can flip this fast.
🧠 Current Market Context
Balance at the Edges Into Severe News
We continue to balance sideways from yesterday’s action, where we took a huge, planned smack from the highs at 7573.00 exactly as called, targeting the low of 7527.00 perfectly. That 7527.00 midpoint pivot has held all night long. It’s my belief that if the 7573.25 / 7576.75 smack was truly going to send this market down, it would have done so yesterday in the cash session or overnight in Globex. The fact that they held 7527.00 and continued to move in a sideways, balanced fashion leads me to believe we have a real possibility of moving higher today. We are still in Negative Gamma and have not technically gained on the Daily — but the 4-Hour and 1-Hour have gained, and they had every opportunity to re-lose them overnight and instead maintained the upside. That puts me in a possible bullish stance: they’ve had every chance to sell this market off and haven’t been able to yet.
