S&P 500 Daily Trade Plan: Price Discovery, Muted Volume & The 7820 Line in the Sand
A detailed ES & VIX plan for August 14th, breaking down the 7820.25 all-time high above/below, the 7809.75 Daily momentum marker, and the VIX 14.95 Monthly suppression pivot.
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Morning everyone. Today is Friday, August 14th, and yesterday was another spectacular display of trade plan amazingness. We have been calling for all-time highs since the Sunday Weekend Review, and then on Tuesday, after holding the lows at 7737, we made an announcement and a commitment to everyone that we would more than likely pop all-time highs. That is exactly what happened yesterday with a ferocious push off the open. We made all-time highs, and we continue to sit in all-time highs this morning, balancing and surfing, as more than likely we move back into price discovery mode.
Congratulations to all the members who were able to capitalize on the 7784 long, and ultimately the retest of the massive 4-Hour at 7799. Those ended up being our perfect pullback mid-morning. They paid well over 25 points and still continued to progress higher from that mark. It was another glorious day for Team Vici and all of our subscribers and members, and I salute each and every one of you for the amazing performance yesterday.
As we come into the day, we find ourselves balancing back in the range at the highs with a very unusual overnight session — believe it or not, we have an overnight range of only 10.75 points. I cannot recall the last time I have seen an overnight range that tight. This is insanely muted, and it sets the entire tone for how we need to approach today.
A Note on Today’s Market:
News: No Red Tag news events this morning. However, we do have Core Retail Sales at 8:30 a.m., Preliminary Consumer Sentiment and Inflation Expectations at 10:00 a.m., and President Trump speaking at 3:00 p.m. Keep in mind these are not Red Tag events, so we are assuming mild reactions — but we don’t judge the news, we simply understand what times they hit so we know when to expect volatility.
Volume: Relative Volume is deeply negative at approximately -36%. It has been very strange to see negative relative volume of over -35% all week long. Using our relative calculation, this trims our usable room down to roughly 26 points above or below the overnight highs or lows.
Range: Expected range of 55 points. We have only moved 10.75 points in the overnight session, which technically leaves approximately 44 points left in the tank above or below the overnight highs or lows — but with relative volume this negative, realistically we are looking at somewhere between 25 and 35 points of usable range today.
Gamma: We are in a Positive Gamma environment with our gamma flip level still located at 7650. Dealers are leaning hard to the upside, hedging their positions, and looking for more price discovery.
Trend: Upside lean. Trend is up on the Daily, 4-Hour, and 1-Hour time frames, meaning we are in buy-the-dip mode once again. Every pullback today is buyable. As long as we stay above 7728, we are looking for nothing but longs.
🧠 Current Market Context
All-Time High Price Discovery & The Buy-the-Dip Mandate
We have been in typical bull market fashion, where price moved sideways in a massive range for eight weeks until we were finally able to break out of that range into a massive push last Tuesday. That propelled us another 100 points to the highs, and we have now sat in that particular range all earlier this week and balanced sideways once again. From the lows of 7737 on Tuesday, we finally accomplished the rest of the follow-through push yesterday, leaving us at all-time highs.
Now we have no reason to believe we should be looking for anything other than buy-the-dip mode right now. We are up on all time frames, we are surfing all-time highs, and that gives us the ability to only look for pullbacks. On top of that, we have a massive amount of support underneath us, and it would take a significant news event for us to break through all of these areas of support in one go.
I want to emphasize this again: we have stayed in a 10.75 point range all evening. That, combined with negative relative volume of nearly -36%, tells us we need to be extremely proactive, wait for a quality setup, and try to get one good trade today. With a muted range possibility of somewhere between 25 and 35 points, it does not leave us a whole lot of room for multiple trade opportunities. Take advantage of whatever is given to us in the early morning, get the heck out of dodge, and enjoy your Friday.
