S&P 500 Daily Trade Plan: The Weekly POC Standoff & The 7524 Momentum Pivot
A detailed ES & VIX plan for July 21st, breaking down the 7524.25 midpoint pivot, the 7596.50 highest untested short, and the VIX 17.44 above/below.
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Good morning, everyone. Today is Tuesday, July 21st, and we come off another ridiculous day in the trade plan. We called bearish action in the Weekend Review, citing the exact areas we would be looking at for reaction, and yesterday proved to be absolute trade plan amazingness. Price started by popping up in the morning session, making it all the way into our 7550s area on ES, only to get smacked and come down all day long, ultimately closing below Friday’s open around 7483.00 — a monster smack for well over 70 points that rewarded trade plan subscribers handsomely.
We also had beautiful confluence yesterday with SPX popping into my bearish zone at 7500.00 - 7506.00, getting hit right there at the open and coming down an equal amount of points. Perfect confluence between ES and SPX, with VIX being our guiding light — coming down to play the 17.44 to the tick before getting a major boost above 18.41, exactly as the trade plan described. Congratulations to all those who took advantage, and to our team members in the inner circle who were lighting up the scoreboard.
Last night in the overnight session, price continued to drift lower and came all the way down to touch — perfectly, to the exact same tick — Friday’s low at 7473.00, essentially creating a double bottom, a “W” on our chart. That lifted the indices back up all night long, leaving us right now directly underneath our significant momentum shift level at 7524.25. This is going to be a big level for us today.
A Note on Today’s Market:
News: No Red Tag news to speak of and nothing scheduled on the docket. That does not mean we are clear — we have more Iran headlines, as they are announcing they are unlikely to ease their negotiation stance despite military action. We need to be prepared for any type of volatility, as we know Trump tweets and war tweets tend to cause completely unexpected market volatility.
Volume: Relative Volume is negative at -22% this morning, which can stifle our expected range and gives us a very muted possibility. This mutes our total potential range down to roughly 59 points for the day.
Range: Expected range of 76 points. We have already moved 57.25 points in the overnight session, leaving us approximately 18.75 points above or below the overnight highs or lows. With the negative relative volume muting our total to around 59 points, we have very little left in the tank before we would be stretching the day’s expectations.
Gamma: We are in a Negative Gamma regime — dealers are hedging to the downside, which also opens the door for volatility expansion and increased range sizes. This guarantees moves in both directions, so look for money to be made both ways.
Trend: Downside lean. We are down on all timeframes — the Daily, the 4-Hour, and the 1-Hour. Our process is truly still pointing us to the downside, and we are only looking for shorts as they present themselves. Rotation both ways is still very possible in this negative gamma environment.
🧠 Current Market Context
The Seven-Week Balance & The Zero-Edge POC
We are still very much within a seven-week balance, and determining a clean direction is difficult as price continues to just drift sideways while the market digests the war news, potential earnings, and other volatility-based information. The interesting thing I noticed this morning is the hold of the lows to the exact same tick, which caused our pop up in the overnight session — and that gives us a little bit of uncertainty about which direction this market could actually go today. We held Friday’s lows and stayed inside Friday and Monday’s range overnight, so which way we break is anybody’s guess.
