Black Monday

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I wanted to do an update yesterday, but the markets were moving so fast I actually could not do one. That said, very early on I was saying this in the chat:  

• IMPRO : Dboy : (9:33:43 AM) : I do not know what the gap study says, but there should be a decent initial bounce. 

• IMPRO : Dboy : (9:34:02 AM) : should have bought the ES — easier to hold, and mentioned buying call lottos 

While buying last Friday's jobs gap down didn’t work due to the sheer size of the selling, yesterday was different. There was almost 1 million ES traded on Globex before the open, and the futures ES had fallen 180 points. 

Overnight inventory for both the ES and NQ was 100% short, which is why I went long on the NQ. However, as I mentioned, the futures were moving so erratically that if you turned your head, the NQ could move 60 or 80 points within minutes, and the ES could move 30 or more points without missing a beat. The level of algorithmic and high-frequency trading programs was unprecedented, operating at a higher rate and in both directions throughout the day. 

Additionally, MrTopStep has a program meter called SpyGate that alerts users with a noise when buy and sell programs are triggered and provides a live summary of the program sizes in dollar terms. According to SpyGate, the total value of buy programs was $36.78 billion, while sell programs amounted to $60.82 billion.