9:08 am Eastern  -We've got a little pullback going in this morning. The premarket opened with a gap lower of more than 50 S&P points. And interestingly, price went right down to a level we had on the board for Friday, at 674.82 and found support. You'll notice in the screenshot below that 674.82 and 673.66 are still on the chart for today (in the light blue dotted lines). They may or may not be tradeable levels for today, as they were in Friday's line up. But if price approaches those levels the correct way today, and there are other confirmations on longer timeframe charts that add credibility to the importance of those levels, they might be tradable. They're at least something to keep an eye on today if price gets down there. 

The other levels in light blue lines are Friday's close (679.46) and another level at 678.35 that was important last week. If price can get above and close above 678.35, then the bulls should have an easier time climbing out of this pull back. Then they'd need to close above Friday's close of 679.46. If price stays below those axis areas, the bears could be able to pull price down more. There has been some selling going on after the Tuesday evening / Wednesday morning rally last week that was likely stimulated by current geopolitical events and other related news items. Does the old adage, "buy the rumor, sell the news" apply here? Possibly. Either way, increased volatility is still a possibility this week. The other levels in dark blue lines are typical Daily Levels designed for Base Hits. 

Nothing about the big picture has changed. Everything is bullish from the macro perspective, but there is room on the downside for a larger reset - the kind of thing that could take months. Monthly closes above 700 would help mitigate the long-term possibility of a bigger reset. And if that happens, it could take some time. Meanwhile, there are plenty of reasons for increased profit-taking. And that can force price lower over the next few months until or unless geopolitical tensions lessen. All this is big picture stuff. It doesn't really make any difference on our Base Hit trading approach at the Daily Levels. When it's not clear where the big-picture trend is heading, it's easier - in my opinion, at least - to pull relatively small trades our of the market at high-probability levels of support and/or resistance. No data releases scheduled for today. Trade well!

Trading by the Ticks & Trades Strategy, here is where you would have landed for the day:

Today was interesting. Price got above the axis levels and that helped the bulls drive price higher - that wasn't the interesting thing. What was somewhat challenging, perhaps, was how you would have traded the levels today. We have a process. We have rules. If you think like a machine, like an algorithm, then the odds are stacked in your favor to pull points out of the market more often than not. About 78% of the time, to be precise - for 2026, so far.

First Base Hit was the long against 676.76 at 9:46 am. Quick bounce and 4 ES points. Shorting at 677.62 meant you added to your position when SPY hit 679.46, not when it hit 678.35. Why? Because there was a Near Miss of the 678.35 level as price climbed up to the next level at 679.46. The trade was out-of-the-money when the position was doubled, but that's how the strategy works in cases like this. Price never reached 20 points OTM during that averaged-in short trade. The combined position handed over Base Hits number two and three.

There was a Base Hit on the Recycle of 678.35 (Base Hit number four). But no Recycle on the other side of 679.46. Price came back into that level from above too soon. Even if you took the long trade when price did come down into 679.46, you would have needed to bail at breakeven for a wash because of the Near Miss of the profit objective at 11:29 am.

Up at 681.34, you had another averaged-in trade across that level and the next one higher at 682.20. The pull back gave you Base Hit numbers five and six.

Going short against 683.06 resulted in an 8-point Fumble, but no Reversal. As you can see, reversing the trade would have worked nicely as bullish momentum was still strong, but the reason you didn't reverse was because the Fumble happened within the last 30 minutes of the regular session. We don't enter new trades during that window of time. Net-net: up 24 points, then down 8 points.

Per the rules, a total of 16 ES points for the day.