Most traders cut back earlier in the week and were long gone from their trading screens by Friday. Only the diehard traders were left watching the futures. The big thing that happened was not the little selloff in the ES, it was Bitcoin falling 22%, and the circuit breakers kicking in as the CME bitcoin futures went ‘limit down’.
Friday’s trade started with a mere 79,000 ESH18’s traded on Globex, and an overnight trading range of 2691.50 to 2686.50. The first print on the 8:30 CT open came in at 2688.50. After the open the ES traded up to 2690.50, and then slowly started to sell off down to 2684.75. After the pullback, the ES traded two ticks above the vwap, up to 2689.00, sold back off to a higher low at 2684.75, rallied back up to 2687.50, and then made two lower lows at 2683,25 and 2682.25. Total volume at 11:30 CT was low, only 340,000 ES traded, and that’s with nearly 80,000 of that coming from Globex.
The markets were open but traders were not trading. After the low, the ES rallied back up to 2686.25, and then up to 2688.50 at 2:24. There was a small pullback before a move up to 2689.25, as the MiM started showing $1.1 billion to buy, and then it pulled back to 2687.25 just before the 2:45 cash close.
It was as expected, a very quiet day in front of the Christmas holiday. In the end the S&P 500 futures (ESH18:CME) settled at 2686.00, down -1.75 handles, or -0.06%; the Dow Jones futures (YMH18:CBT) settled at 24,766, down -12 points, or -0.04%; the Nasdaq 100 futures (NQH18:CME) settled at 6483.75, down -8.50 points, or -0.13%; and the Russell 2000 (RTYH18:CME) settled at 1543.70, down -6.50 points or -0.42% on the day.
As always, please use protective buy and sell stops when trading futures and options.