Differences

We spent most of the day doing some short-term wave counts which are in the comments section for the prior post. Today, near the end of the day we wanted to highlight the difference between two markets and how they acted towards the close. Below are the daily charts of the NQ versus the ES futures.

NQ versus ES Futures - Daily

Notice that the NQ futures made a full-on outside-day-down (ODD), while the ES futures only made a higher high day (HHD).

The ES futures, in particular, appear to be having "the battle at the 18-day SMA".  There seems to be something different going on with them: two minutes before the cash close, they were down approximately -18 points. Then, nearly on the cash close they were only down -8. It is something to keep in mind as it turned the volume spike in the SPY at the end of the day from red to green on the intraday chart (5 min).

You will also note from above that the NQ futures have no overlap on their last two most recent bars with the down bar on 1 Apr. Clearly, on the other hand, the ES futures last two days do indeed overlap with the down bar on 1 Apr. 

These are things one should keep in mind when counting waves. The stocks included in each index are different in both their number and their composition. At times, the different indexes act very differently. Not convinced? You might like to do a side-by-side on the Russell 2000 futures.

Have an excellent start to the evening.

TraderJoe