CONTROL CENTER

Friday, October 16, 2026 · snapshot checked 7:53 AM ET · MES1! (December)

BIASNEUTRAL
50%

MES MICRO FUTURES MES1! (December) - free feed, delayed ~10 min

Read of the day

Neutral, subjective 50%, not a calibrated win rate. Futures are firmer premarket after a hot core CPI week: S&P futures were up about 0.2% (about 13-15 points) in early premarket reports but still on pace for a weekly loss, with AI and tech stocks under pressure. Core CPI (released Wed Oct 14) rose 0.3% m/m against 0.2% expected, 2.6% y/y, with energy up 5.2% (Yahoo Finance summary; secondary source). Fed Chair Warsh was scheduled for a Bangkok fireside chat at 10:30 AM local, which is 11:30 PM ET Thursday, so it is already over; I have not verified what he said. MES is near 7,795, back below yesterday's RTH high of 7,801.75 after an overnight run to 7,809.50. No breakers, no rule changes.

Liquidity map

MES December 5-minute candles, Thursday 6 PM to Friday 7:35 AM ET, with the overnight high 7,809.50, prior-day RTH high 7,801.75, RTH close 7,790.75 and overnight low 7,774.50 marked

Own MESZ26 bars, feed about 10 minutes behind; only finalized bars are drawn (through the 7:35 AM bar). A map, not an entry card. No TradingView price alert is active right now: the earlier alerts have each fired once and have not been re-armed. A crossing only means price touched a level; it is not a setup, and the sweep, structure and retest still have to be confirmed.

Live chart - S&P 500 proxy (NOT MES1!)

This is an S&P 500 CFD proxy, not the MES December contract: its price reads roughly 50 points below MES1!. Use it for shape only; every level on this page and the liquidity map above is in MES1! terms. Interactive US500 CFD proxy (not MES1!) chart (TradingView). CME futures symbols are not embeddable, so this proxy tracks the moves; its price scale sits below MES1! by the December basis. All levels on this page and the liquidity map above are exact MES1! terms.

Tape setup

Levels are MESZ26 own prints. Session boundaries: RTH is 9:30 AM-4:00 PM ET. Thursday RTH high 7,801.75 (3:20 PM, the PDH), RTH low 7,717.25 (9:55 AM, the PDL and the 5-day low), RTH close 7,790.75. The 7,806.50 print Thursday was after 6 PM, so it belongs to the overnight session, not the PDH. Overnight (6 PM on) high 7,809.50 (4:25 AM), low 7,774.50 (Thu 8:00 PM). 5-day high 7,887.00 (Mon 1:05 AM). The overnight high swept above the RTH PDH 7,801.75 and price is back below it; that overnight move is not a rulebook entry, which needs a pool sweep, wick structure and an OB/FVG/IFVG retest inside 9:45-noon. BUY SIDE = highs above price (7,801.75, 7,809.50); SELL SIDE = lows below price (7,774.50, 7,717.25).

Catalysts

Scheduled today (official sources): 8:30 AM ET BLS U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes for September; 9:15 AM ET Fed Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization (G.17, monthly releases are issued at 9:15 a.m.). CPI was Oct 14 and PPI and retail sales were Oct 15. I did not check a complete calendar of every other release (for example private-sector data or Fed speakers beyond the Warsh chat), so absence from this list does not mean nothing else is scheduled. Warsh fireside chat already happened overnight (see above). Backdrop: hot core CPI, hotter energy prices, higher-for-longer rate worries, AI-stock pressure, Middle East headline risk.

Sources and freshness

Snapshot checked 7:53 AM ET; bars about 10 minutes delayed, finalized bars only. No TradingView price alert is claimed active. K is gross, X is net after $3.75/ct modeled round-trip costs. Paper rules frozen through Oct 20. X is a lookahead-affected simulation (entry-bar ATR), not live-executable expectancy.

BLS October schedule · Fed G.17 schedule · BLS PPI Oct 15 · Census retail sales · Yahoo Finance · Investing.com

The play - conditional sweep setups, both sides (you place it, you own it)

ConditionConditional only, 9:45 AM-noon ET. Sequence: sweep of a real pool (confirmed 15m/1H swing or session high/low, never a prior-bar high/low, and a gap alone is not a sweep), then wick HH-HL (long) or LL-LH (short), then an OB/FVG/IFVG retest entry, stop beyond the sweep wick, fixed 2R. Sweep and close-back alone never qualify.

Long ideaPool: overnight low 7,774.50 (session low). Needs a sweep below it, then wick HH-HL and an OB/FVG/IFVG retest. Example entry 7,776.25 (illustrative only).

Long stop / target7,771.25 / 7,786.25 (2R)

Long riskStop 5 points, 1 MES $25, inside the $50 long cap (dollar cap only; no room percentage, the account balance is unverified). Est. win about 40% / loss about 60%, an untested hypothesis with no sample behind it (2R breakeven is 33.3%). A deeper sweep wick moves the stop and the size.

Short ideaPool: overnight high 7,809.50 (session high). Needs a sweep above it, then wick LL-LH and an OB/FVG/IFVG retest. Example entry 7,806 (illustrative only).

Short stop / target7,811 / 7,796 (2R)

Short riskStop 5 points, 1 MES $25, at the $25 short cap (dollar cap only; no room percentage). Est. win about 40% / loss about 60%, an untested hypothesis. A sweep wick well above 7,809.50 would need a wider stop, which breaks the $25 cap at 1 MES: skip it then.

PDH / PDLThe 7,801.75 RTH high was already taken by the overnight run to 7,809.50, and the PDL 7,717.25 is about 76 points below price. Either is only a pool if the full sequence prints. No probability is claimed for any of this before a setup exists.

Do not place any setup without the full sequence above. Do not place a long if 7,774.50 is not swept, or the short if 7,809.50 is not swept or if price accepts above it. Not before 9:45, not beyond the $50 long / $25 short cap, not after two losses or -$100. No breakers or rule changes. If nothing prints cleanly by noon, no trade.

Logging as:

Tap after the decision - it writes to that person's journal.

Guardrails

Advisory only. Frozen caps $50 long / $25 short, minimum 2R, max two trades/day, stop after two losses or -$100. No entry is active until the conditions above print. Broker/account internals omitted from this shared briefing.

Journal - Kilo

Auto-journaled from the account after each session (read-only) plus Kilo's own taps. Click an entry to expand.

Journal - Anthony

Anthony's own took-it/skipped-it taps only. Nothing is pulled from any account of his.

What's new

Audit - Friday page published 7:55 AM with the Oct 9 bracket card. Snapshot: 7:45 AM feed, price ~7,847. Rebuilt the page API worker from its saved source after a workspace reset; price, bars and journal outputs checked identical before switching. Fri Oct 9 AM ET
Audit - Monday page published 7:55 AM; no setup printed yet. Snapshot: 7:50 AM feed, price ~7,779. Rebuilt the page's API worker after a workspace reset; price, bars and journal outputs were checked identical to the prior ones before switching, and the existing journal entries are intact. Fixed a stale Project X loss figure left in Friday's text (-$189.60 is now -$184.60 per the Oct 2 cost correction). Mon 7:55 AM ET
Audit - Friday page published 8:05 AM with the NFP-day bracket card. Snapshot: 7:52 AM Tradovate live, price ~7,757. Also repaired the page header (the Thursday publish had left the HTML doctype overwritten and a stale Wednesday date in the header). Fri 8:05 AM ET
Audit - Thursday page published 8:05 AM with the ISM-day bracket card. Snapshot: 7:52 AM Tradovate live, price ~7,742.25. Thu 8:05 AM ET
Audit - Wednesday page published 8:00 AM with the PCE-day bracket card. Snapshot: 7:55 AM feed, price ~7,732. Wed 8:00 AM ET
Audit - Stripped an unverified attribution from the old Tue 7:10 AM change-log entry; the log only keeps requests that can be verified. Tue 8:05 AM ET
Audit - Tuesday page published early at 7:10 AM; folded into the usual morning build. Snapshot: 7:05 AM feed, price ~7,842.50. Tue 7:10 AM ET
Audit - Triple-check correction: 7,750.25 was mislabeled "week high" - it is last Friday's (Sep 11) high; this week's high is 7,739.00 (= ON high). Level itself unchanged. Fri 8:20 PM ET
Kilo - "Start using MES1!": every level, the price strip, the chart, and alerts switched from the September contract to MES1! (December). Live Sep-Dec spread verified at 67.00 before translating. Tue 10:40 AM ET
Kilo - Liquidity map cleaned up: targets merged into their levels (Friday high = TP1, range top = TP2), no more overlapping labels, staggered text, stop and settle moved to the side rail. Sun 11:41 PM ET
Anthony - "Change the market to MES": market toggle now reads MES / MNQ (the micros actually traded here) and the page is denominated in MES throughout. Sun 10:31 PM ET
Kilo - Trading Plan rulebook added as a permanent section. Sun 10:13 PM ET
Kilo - Site goes interactive: live price, zoomable chart, took-it/skipped-it journal buttons, ES/NQ toggle. Sun 10:30 PM ET
Kilo - Automatic trade journaling: executed trades pulled after each session and scored against the rulebook. Sun 10:30 PM ET
Kilo - Separate journals for Kilo and Anthony, both interactive. Sun 10:30 PM ET

The Trading Plan

The settled rulebook. Advisory rules for self-directed trading - not signals, not recommendations to buy or sell.

MES only, 1 contract. No other symbols, no adds.
1-2 trades per day. When they're used, the day is done.
Window: premarket, or after the first 15m candle post-9:30 (from ~9:45 AM ET).
Risk cap is the setup filter: the frozen dollar caps are $50 long and $25 short (1 MES is 10 and 5 points). A wider stop means the setup gets skipped, not sized up. No drawdown-room scaling is applied: the room figure is unverified.
Shorts only on the full setup (sweep + close back inside + structure shift + FVG fill), $25 risk.
Daily stop: two losses or -$100, whichever comes first.
No MYM or MNQ until MES produces two profitable weeks.
Journal every trade against the setup, win or lose.

HISTORY

Fri Sep 11 - first build. Bias history starts Mon Sep 14; results log against your journal begins after the first week.