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Tuesday, October 20, 2026 · snapshot checked 7:58 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. Index futures are mixed: Nasdaq futures down about 0.5% and S&P futures roughly flat to slightly lower in early premarket, with AI and tech weak again after Monday's rebound. Oil is higher (Brent about $111, WTI about $108) on reported Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and a strong US factory-activity read is on the positive side. MES is trading around 7,720-7,725. The last finalized 5m close (7:40 AM, 7,723.50 on the current feed; it first read 7,724.50 before the feed revised it) is below the PDL 7,727.50, below the Monday-evening 15m lows 7,725.25 and 7,723.75, and above the new overnight low 7,717.00 (7:30 AM). Closes back above those three levels did occur between about 6:10 and 7:20 AM and did not hold, so price has probed below and not held a reclaim: nothing has completed. Housing starts and permits are listed by Census for today (release time not verified); SpaceX reports after the close. No breakers, no rule changes.

Liquidity map

MES December 5-minute candles, Monday 6 PM to Tuesday 7:40 AM ET, with the prior-day RTH high 7,773.25, overnight high 7,752.75, overnight low 7,717.00, Monday's RTH close 7,735.00 and the prior-day RTH low 7,727.50 marked

Own MESZ26 bars, feed about 10 minutes behind; only finalized bars are drawn (through the 7:40 AM bar). A map, not an entry card. No TradingView price alert is claimed active. 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. Monday RTH high 7,773.25 (the PDH, 11:35 AM), RTH low 7,727.50 (the PDL, 10:00 AM), RTH close 7,735.00. Overnight (Mon 6 PM on) high 7,752.75 (11:05 PM) and low 7,717.00 (7:30 AM today); the overnight high/low are session reference levels, and today's low is the fresh extreme, so it only becomes something to sweep once price trades back below it later. 5-day high 7,809.50 (Fri Oct 16, 4:25 AM), 5-day low 7,676.00 (Fri 3:05 PM). Confirmed 15m swings nearby (two bars each side): highs 7,752.75 (Mon 11:00 PM), 7,750.25 (2:45 AM), 7,745.25 (4:30 AM); lows 7,727.75 (2:00 AM), 7,725.25 (Mon 8:15 PM), 7,723.75 (Mon 9:15 PM). State at the last finalized close (7:40 AM, 7,723.50): below the PDL 7,727.50, below 7,725.25, below 7,723.75, above 7,717.00. Closes back above those lows occurred at times between 6:10 and 7:20 AM and did not hold. BUY-SIDE liquidity (high-based pools) = 7,752.75 and the 7,750.25 / 7,745.25 swing highs, then the PDH 7,773.25. SELL-SIDE liquidity (low-based pools) = 7,717.00 overnight low, 7,676.00 5-day low, plus the PDL 7,727.50 and the Monday-evening lows 7,725.25 / 7,723.75, which price has already traded below. Overhead reference levels (above price, but not buy-side pools): the PDL 7,727.50 and those two lows sit just above price as resistance-type references, and Monday's close 7,735.00 is a reference waypoint only. Monday's close is not a pool. The feed revises recent bars, so these values can shift.

Catalysts

Verified at owning sources: Census lists a housing starts and building permits release for Oct 20 (census.gov economic indicators; release time not verified here). SpaceX scheduled its Q3 results for after the close today, with a 4:30 PM ET webcast (SpaceX investor relations). The Fed's calendar shows the next FOMC meeting Oct 27-28; a Fed speaker schedule for this week was not verified. Scheduled-event coverage is INCOMPLETE - treat it as not an all-clear. Reported by secondary sources: earnings from GM, 3M, GE Aerospace and RTX before the open; Netflix and United after the close. Backdrop: oil higher on Mideast tensions, AI and tech weakness on debt and valuation worries, strong factory-activity data.

Sources and freshness

Snapshot checked 7:58 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.

TipRanks futures · WSJ live · SpaceX IR · Census · Fed calendar

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: PDL 7,727.50 and the Monday-evening 15m lows 7,725.25 / 7,723.75 (price has traded below all three; closes back above have not held). Needs a close back above that holds, then wick HH-HL and an OB/FVG/IFVG retest; or a fresh sweep of the overnight low 7,717.00 after 9:45. Whether the pre-9:45 push below these counts is not pre-judged. Example entry 7,726.00 (illustrative only).

Long stop / target7,716.75 / 7,744.50 (2R)

Long riskStop 9.25 points, 1 MES $46.25, 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 7,752.75 (confirmed 15m swing high), or 7,750.25. Needs a sweep above it, then wick LL-LH and an OB/FVG/IFVG retest. Example entry 7,750.00 (illustrative only).

Short stop / target7,754.25 / 7,741.50 (2R)

Short riskStop 4.25 points, 1 MES $21.25, inside 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 7,752.75 would need a wider stop, which breaks the $25 cap at 1 MES: skip it then.

PDH / PDLThe PDH 7,773.25 is about 50 points above price and the PDL 7,727.50 about 7 points above price (price is below it); both are session pools that still need the full sequence, as does the 5-day low 7,676.00 about 44 below. The 7,745-7,753 overnight swing highs are nearer swing pools on the same terms; the Monday-evening lows 7,725.25 and 7,723.75 are confirmed 15m swing lows that price has traded below, with closes back above them that did not hold. Monday's close 7,735.00 is reference only - a close never becomes a pool, with or without a sequence; only confirmed swing or session highs/lows qualify. 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 the long without a close back above the swept pool, or the short if 7,752.75 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.