S&P 500 Daily Trade Plan: Three-Week Balance & The 7414 Daily Battleground
A detailed ES & VIX plan for May 21st, breaking down the 7414.00 monster daily pivot, the 7450s upside wall, and the VIX 17.40s midpoint tiebreaker.
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A quick announcement to all subscribers — please check your spam/junk folder for emails from rbailey@vicitradingsolutions.com and info@vicitradingsolutions.com. I have been sending out follow-ups and touch-ups to all subscribers, including those who have subscribed to the SPX Brief, and I can clearly see many of these emails are getting stuck in the spam box and are not being opened. Please mark these emails as “Not Spam” so you continue to receive them in your inbox — there is valuable information I send out and I don’t want any of you to miss it.
🎓 Don’t Forget to Register: “How to Trade a Trade Plan” Webinar — May 28th!
Make sure you sign up for the How to Trade a Trade Plan webinar happening May 28th. This will help answer any questions you may have regarding the specifics around the trade plan and how to properly get the most out of it. We will also be doing a live Q&A session afterward where you can ask anything you like. I will be giving away a funded prop firm examination — so make sure you register and use your real phone number. Every person signed up is entered to win, and I will be texting the winners only, so a valid phone number is required to win.
👉 Register here: https://pages.vicitradingsolutions.com/tradetheplan
🎥 A little sneak peek at the info I drop for my Inner Circle members in the Discord. Filmed last night at 6:30 PM — this should give you a real idea of the quality and in-depth detail I provide for all my members.
SCHEDULED NEWS
Morning everyone. Today is Thursday, May 21st, and yesterday’s trade plan worked out perfectly as we were able to decipher the difference between SPX and ES’s discrepancy for a bullish or bearish structure and kept our lean to the upside. We knew that 7414.00 was our significant and very important pivot to monitor for price to push above or below — that came in the early morning with 7414.00 playing for the beautiful smack, and then an afternoon push well above it, sending it up another 40-plus points into the 7450.00 area. We were also able to catch an amazing long from 7376.75, which happened to be the exact level in the trade plan that sent us up all the way to the highs. It was an incredible display of trade plan perfection. Congratulations to all those who took advantage of yesterday’s plan as it all came together for us once again.
Yesterday we had Nvidia earnings, and Nvidia seems to be relatively flat this morning after an intense push down playing the daily level. This is going to be very important for us today as Nvidia’s movement counts for 7% of the S&P 500 — keep an eye on this, as we can expect volatility as options markets have to digest all the implied volatility, which could potentially give us a move in the indices.
A Note on Today’s Market:
News: No Red Tag news to speak of. We do have pre-market news at 8:30 AM — Philly Fed Manufacturing and Unemployment Claims — but these are not Red Tag events. At 9:45 AM after the open, we have Flash Manufacturing PMI, again a news event but not Red Tag. These could give us a shake just based on timing, so keep them in mind. Also keep an eye on Nvidia this morning as the massive AI players settle up their positions after yesterday’s earnings, causing potential increased volatility around option settlement.
Volume: Relative Volume is elevated at +27% this morning, which could potentially give us a little pickup in our range. We will be patient and see how this plays out.
Range: Expected range of 87 points. We have moved a total range of 62 points in the overnight session, leaving us approximately 25 points in the tank above or below the overnight high or low. We are opening directly inside yesterday’s value area and in the middle of a three-week balance — statistics give us a high probability to move outside this range at some point today.
Gamma: Quick disclosure — our options GEX levels are 100% accurate, however our data is not currently giving us a gamma skew, and we are actively working on this. In lieu of that, we will lean on our process to understand if the pressure is above or below and which way we need to lean.
Trend: Conflicting signals once again. We lost on the Daily timeframe yesterday and even after the massive squeeze, that push up accomplished nothing from a cash perspective. However, in the overnight session the four-hour actually gained support by closing above 7450.50. I default to the Daily timeframe always and expect a potential push lower — but with the four-hour showing a gain, money can be made in both directions and we shouldn’t be biased.
🧠 Current Market Context
The Three-Week Balance & The 7414 Back-and-Forth
We come into the morning in a very difficult position. We find ourselves in the middle of a three-week balance — three weeks of prior price action to the left that we are contained in, making it very difficult to find a high quality trade at our given location. Yesterday’s close was directly at the previous weekly point of control, in the middle of a massively large weekly that had a 176-point range, leaving us dead in the middle of value with little to no edge. As we know, our edge is in the edges, and being right in the middle of a three-week balance certainly makes that more difficult.
