Yesterday, Asian stocks bolted higher, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index adding 1.9%, and Europe followed. Just before the S&P’s opened the DAX was up 1.10%. With only 3 1/2 trading days, holiday weeks are easy to take advantage of. As people take time off the volumes drop, and with so many buy stops above, the algos have no choice but to ‘runem’, and that’s exactly what they did. I know I was off on my ES 2600 call by a few weeks, but there is no doubt that it was on tap.
Tuesdays trade started with 221,00 e-mini S&P 500 futures (ESZ17:CME) trading before the 8:30 open. The Globex range was 2592.25 to 2597.25, and the first print off the 8:30 CT futures open was 2590.50. The ES didn’t waste any time trading up to 2598.75. Clearly, volume was a factor, there was no selling. If you look at the chart the ES stayed above the vwap all the way up.
Basically, the ES held in a narrowing 1.5 to 2.5 handle range from 2597.50 to 2599.00 from 9:15 to 12:30. Around 12:45 the ES made a new high at 2600.25, and then pulled back to 2597.75 before heading back up 2599.25. After that, the ES sold off down to 2596.25 as the MiM started to show $565 million to buy. The MiM jumped up to MOC buy $1 billion, and the actual NYSE Closing Imbalance came out a NET Buy $1.393 billion – 11/21/2017-15:45 EST.
From there, the ES traded back up to 2598.75 and settled at 2596.25, up +14.25 handles, or +0.54% on the day. In the end it was a smashing type of rally with little to no pull backs. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the biggest U.S. company by market cap, closed up 1.9%. The company’s stock is up 11% in the past month and nearly 50% this year. The Dow Jones futures (YMZ17:CBT) settled at 23,543, up +148 points, or +0.62%; the Nasdaq 100 futures (NQZ17:CME) settled at 6379.50, up +63.50 points, or +0.99%; and the Russell 2000 (RTYZ17:CME) settled at 1518.80, up +14.70 points or +0.96 % on the day.