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Hope everyone had a safe and happy Fourth of July. I hope you kept all your fingers. We had a short week, a wild week, and a week that had a little bit of something for everybody — bears at the open on Thursday, bulls into the close. That's the market doing what the market does. Now we reset, and there's a lot to talk about heading into the week of July 6th.
Before we get into the game plan, I want to highlight something. Thursday's expected-move levels worked again. The high of the day at the open was 7,588 — my upper expected-move number from the game plan. The low of the day was 7,496 — my lower expected-move number. The whole day's range, both top and bottom, printed right at the levels I published the night before. I'm not telling you I predicted the future. I'm telling you the process works, and that's exactly why we do this every single day.
MARKET OVERVIEW: WHERE THINGS STAND Let's zoom out. I want you to think about the market like a forest, a tree, a branch, and a leaf. This is a framework I've been using in the trading room and I want every member reading this to have it in their toolkit permanently. The forest is the monthly chart — the biggest picture. Right now, the forest is green. The long-term trend in equities is up. That hasn't changed. The tree is the daily chart. Pull the daily back and it looks a little chaotic right now — some branches going up, some going down — but the overall shape of the tree is healthy. The branch is the 30-minute volume profile, which gives us the directional logic for each trading session. And the leaf? That's your individual trade — a bull flag, an expected-move reversal, a scalp off the profile level. The leaf matters, but only because it's attached to a branch, that's attached to a tree, that's standing in a green forest. Why does this matter right now? Because we had a rough few days in the Nasdaq and S&P while the Dow and Russell made all-time highs. If you only looked at the Nasdaq leaf, you'd think the forest was on fire. It isn't. The Dow hit 53,000. The Russell hit all-time highs. Six of nine S&P sectors closed positive on Thursday. Apple was up 5% on its own. The advance-decline line was positive all day. The forest is green — a few branches are shaking. The semiconductor pullback is the culprit for the Nasdaq weakness. A handful of large-cap chip names selling off dragged the index down 2% while most of the market was actually up. This is rotation, not distribution. Money isn't leaving equities — it's moving from one pocket to another. When you see small caps and industrials hitting all-time highs at the same time semiconductors are pulling back, that's a market rotating into breadth, which is actually a bullish sign for the broader market longer term. The NFP report came in at roughly 172K jobs for June — solid, not spectacular. Released Thursday due to the Friday holiday, it confirmed the labor market remains healthy without being so hot that it would spook the Fed. The forest stays green.
WHAT TO EXPECT THE NEXT FEW DAYS We come back from the holiday weekend with /ES sitting around 7,521, above the lower expected-move level from Thursday (7,496) but below the upper (7,588). The volume profile shows a wide, balanced structure — I called it "neutral in a wide profile" heading into Thursday's game plan. That wide profile means no strong directional edge from the structure alone. Price needs to pick a side. The expected moves for the coming session (based on Thursday's close near 7,521): /ES upper 7,575 / lower 7,477. /NQ upper 29,935 / lower 29,141. /RTY upper 3,043.90 / lower 2,984.70. The Russell's prior bearish target of 3,070 → 3,000 was hit — we're now neutral on /RTY until a new profile setup forms. Here's how I'm thinking about the days ahead: Monday, Jul 6: First full session back after the holiday. Expect some early volatility as the market re-calibrates. Watch whether /ES reclaims 7,540+ — that's the first sign bulls are back in control. Volume will be lighter than normal; beware of whippy price action in the first 30 minutes to an hour. Wednesday–Thursday, Jul 8–9: The FOMC minutes from the June meeting drop Wednesday (2:00 PM ET). This is the week the market starts pricing in the next rate decision. Any hawkish surprises in the minutes will create volatility. Size down into the release.
FUTURES 101: CONCEPT OF THE WEEK This week's concept: runway trading — why you trade in the direction of the longer runway, and what that actually means in practice. I use the runway metaphor a lot, so let me make it concrete. When you're landing a plane, you want the longest, widest runway you can find. A short, narrow runway is still landable — a good pilot can do it — but your margin for error is razor-thin. One small mistake and it's over. A long, wide runway gives you room to be a little off and still walk away. In trading, the runway is the distance price can travel in a given direction before hitting resistance. On Thursday, the bear runway was 90 handles — from the open at 7,588 all the way down to 7,496. The bull runway was 35 handles — from 7,496 back up toward the midpoint. I'll be honest: I came in thinking "rally for America" and tried to land the bull plane all morning. That's a 35-handle runway. The bears had 90. They were right to take the wider runway, even if I didn't love the direction. How do you identify the wider runway before the session? Three steps: (1) Look at the volume profile — if price is near the top of the profile, the path of least resistance is down to the midpoint. If it's near the bottom, the path is up. (2) Check the expected move — the open relative to the EM levels tells you which side has more room to run. (3) Confirm with the daily chart — if the bigger trend is up, bull runways will generally be longer over time, even if a single day favors the bears. The key lesson: you don't have to trade every runway. You don't have to trade the short, narrow one just because it's there. Patience means waiting for the setup where the runway is long enough to make the risk worth it. Bears got 90 handles on Thursday. That's worth trading. Bulls got 35. That's still tradeable — but you better be precise.
TRADE IDEA OF THE WEEK No trade idea going into this week. All three major indices — /ES, /NQ, and /RTY — are sitting at their volume profile midpoints. When price is at the midpoint, the market is in balance. There's no structural edge in either direction until price moves away from center and commits. My approach in that environment: I wait. No forcing it, no guessing. Let the market show me a side, and then we'll have a trade. Here's an example of /ES below.
ON THE RADAR: KEY EVENTS THIS WEEK
TRENDING STOCKS ON THE RADAR The leaders (uptrend scan): INTC, TXN, AMD, CSCO, CAT, TGT TGT is the new addition this week, replacing MS. Target has been quietly building a multi-month base and is starting to show the kind of rising moving average structure that earns a spot on the scan. It joins the usual suspects: CAT remains the cleanest chart in the group (sales per share rising from $92 → $143, persistent uptrend), AMD and INTC continue to benefit from the broader AI infrastructure buildout even as the Nasdaq pulled back on individual chip names. Watch for pullbacks to the 20-day EMA on each — that's the entry, not the new highs. The coilers (sideways/compressed ADX scan): BRK/B, COST, AIG, BA, EMR, AMGN Boeing is the interesting one here. BA has been range-bound for months — quality issues, delivery headwinds, management turnover. But it's on the low-ADX scan because it's been remarkably flat. When a stock with Boeing's volatility history starts coiling like this, a directional move is coming. The question is which way. Watch for a break of the range boundaries; the move out of a multi-month compression tends to be significant.
Until next Sunday — The forest is green. The Russell and Dow are at all-time highs. Oil is falling back toward fair value. NFP was solid. The expected moves worked again on Thursday — both the high and low of the day hit the levels from the game plan. The market comes back from the holiday in a balanced, wide profile on /ES, which means we wait for price to commit before picking a side. FOMC minutes Wednesday is the event worth sizing down around. Everything else is noise. Trade the runway that's in front of you, not the one you wish was there. — Corey |
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