I don’t predict. I mark where price stopped before and I wait. Today gave me another data point to mark, not another reason to guess what happens next. SPY closed at $762.60, down 0.84% from yesterday. QQQ closed at $710.93, down 0.72%. That’s the fourth losing session out of the last five for both names, and the fifth down day in six sessions if you count the small give-back tucked inside that stretch.
I want to walk through how we got here, day by day, because the shape of the pullback matters more than any single close.
The Levels Given Back
SPY printed its recent high on August 13 at $777.88. From there: August 17 closed $772.67, down 0.47%. August 18 closed $767.45, down 0.68%. August 19 gave a small breather, closing $769.06, up 0.21%. Then today, August 20, SPY opened at $765.96, pushed up to $768.15, got sold down to $762.05, and closed at $762.60. That’s a close near the low of the day’s range, not the middle and not the high. When a session closes near its low after an early push higher, that’s sellers showing up into strength, not a random flush.
QQQ has moved the same way, just with more distance traveled. The high was also August 13, at $732.07. August 17 closed $729.87, down 0.16% — barely a scratch. August 18 is where it turned, closing $717.51, down 1.69% in a single session. August 19 closed $716.08, down another 0.20%. Today QQQ opened $712.28, ran up to $714.94, got pushed down to $708.52, and closed at $710.93. Same pattern as SPY: a high made early, then sold into the close.
Add it up and SPY is down about 2.0% from its August 13 high across four losing days out of the last five. QQQ is down about 2.9% over the same stretch. The Nasdaq name is giving back more, which lines up with what I’ve watched all year — when the tape turns, the names that ran hardest give back the most. Nothing mysterious there. Just the levels doing what levels do.
What a Close Near the Low Actually Tells Me
I don’t read a single red day as a signal. One down day is noise. Four of five is a pattern worth marking. What I care about is where each session closed relative to its own range. Today, both SPY and QQQ opened well off their morning highs and pushed further down into the close. That’s not indecision — indecision looks like a doji in the middle of the range. This is directional pressure that showed up in the final hour and didn’t get bought back.
I’m not saying that means tomorrow is red too. I have no idea what tomorrow does, and neither does anyone claiming otherwise. What I’m saying is the level I drew off the August 13 high held as resistance three separate times this week, and the level near $762 on SPY and $709-711 on QQQ is now where I’m watching for a reaction. If price comes back up into the zone it broke down from and gets rejected again, that tells me something. If it holds above today’s low and starts building, that tells me something different. I don’t need to know which one happens before it happens. I just need the lines drawn so I recognize it when it does.
A Quiet Friday, On Paper
Tomorrow, August 21, there’s no major scheduled US economic data release. The calendar is empty on that front. The one item sitting on it is a presidential speech at 7:00pm ET, which is an evening event, well after the close, and it’s a headline-risk item rather than a data print. I’m not going to guess what gets said in it. That’s not a level, it’s not a chart, and treating a speech like an indicator is exactly the kind of thing that put fourteen lines on my chart years ago and told me nothing useful.
So the session itself, during market hours, is quiet by the calendar. No CPI, no jobs number, no Fed minutes. That doesn’t mean the tape will be quiet — five losing sessions out of six can keep moving on its own momentum without any data forcing it — but it does mean I’m not walking in with an economic print to react to. I’m walking in with the same two numbers I’ve had all week: the resistance zone up near where price kept failing, and the low each name just carved out today.
What I’m Doing With It
Same thing I do every day the chart gives me a pullback instead of a breakout. I mark the level where the sellers took control this week. I mark the level where today’s low sits. And then I wait for price to come back to one of those lines and show me what it does there. That’s the whole plan. Not a prediction about Friday, not a guess about the evening speech, just two prices on a blank chart and the discipline to let price make the next move before I do.
The pullback is real — 2% on SPY, almost 3% on QQQ off the same August 13 high — and it’s been orderly, one lower close after another rather than a single panic day. Orderly pullbacks are the ones worth marking carefully, because they tend to respect the lines rather than blow through them. That’s the bet I’m making tomorrow: not on direction, but on the idea that the level will matter when price gets back to it.
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