S&P 500 Emini Day Trading Gap Wednesday August 26, 2009

S&P Emini 500 Futures gapped up 4 points this morning, and took most of the trading day to fill.  The open was 1029.25, and prices began to move down towards the gap, but found support at 1026.50.  Buyers took control in front of  the release of the Consumer Confidence results at 10 a.m.  The index had already gained 5.50 points when the news was released.  Buyers took prices up in massive volume, and reached a high of 1038.00.  In classic “sell on the news” fashion, the sellers stepped in and took back the entire gain, on huge volume, to the 1026.50 support level.  All of this action took place in the first hour of trading….whew.  Over the next 2 hours prices slowly clawed their way to about a 77% retracement of the morning’s trading, then topped with a perfect shooting star candlestick at 12:35.  The bears took command and drove the index through the 1026.50 support, with a little bit of a struggle from 1:30-2:30, filled the gap, and took prices to the low of the day, 1024.75, at 2:45.  The last hour of trading brought the index back through the prior support and closed within a couple of ticks at 1027.00, up 1.75 points.  For all the apparent volatility, today’s range was only 13.25 points, below the average true range of 19 points.  Volume was higher than average at just over 2 million contracts.