Typical Holiday Market - So Far

U.S. Debt Clock: $23.07 Trillion; prev $23.06
ES Daily Candle: Higher High, Higher Low, Higher Close: Trend Day
Market Posture: Neutral-to-negative and Probing
Daily Swing Line: Higher
Daily Bias: Up (Settle Above 18-day SMA)

In a fairly typical pre-holiday market lots of big players make their exits to be with friends and family or on vacation and prices are more free to float higher. Such was seen at the end of the session today. The price bias has been over the 18-day SMA since October 11th. The swing line is now up again, and price has closed up over the daily upper Bollinger band.

ES Futures - Daily - Close Over the Upper Band

There is only roughly a 5% probability of prices closing over the upper band, by random chance, on any given day. Of course, we know this is not purely 'random chance'. Three-to-five consecutive days over the band starts to get very, very low probability - in the 1 - 2% range. Like it or not, the Smart Money plays the odds. The slow stochastic is still just in the over-bought category. And, the daily gap in the futures, themselves, has been highlighted.

From a shorter-term wave count perspective, the chart shown yesterday is updated again, below. Today's afternoon rise could be yet another bubble-licious ((B)) wave. A ((B)) wave in a (B) wave?

ES Futures - 45 Minutes - Expanded Flat

If higher prices are made tonight in the after-hours, that might well fit with the ((B)) wave of an expanded flat. Reliable quotes show the ES 10/22 ((B)) wave was not higher than wave i. Therefore, a higher high wave in wave iv might provide reasonable alternation, especially if price makes a lower low than ((A)) - which it did not in wave ii.  The alternate would have to be that the low of wave ((A)) is wave iv in a wedge count, but the EWO did not drop below the zero line. So, we still need to be patient and flexible. Nothing rules out higher highs for ((B)) or for v. There are 130 candles on the 45-minute chart, we may switch to an hourly chart, yet, before this wave is done. 

The parallel channel is clearly shown. Price has not come close to the lower channel boundary, yet. My suspicion is they're going to make any ((C)) wave down difficult to catch - possibly occurring in the after-hours, and likely on some news story out of China or about poor U.S. retail sales over the holiday weekend. At any rate, price is over the 18-day SMA, and the price bias and swing line are up. Right? 

I hope you enjoy the holidays, and as I will be, too, there may be less frequent interactions with the site for the next couple of days.

Now is a time to be grateful for what we have, and share it with those who would like to or need to.

TraderJoe