Buy Levels Marked the Lows

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Two hourly buy levels on the imbalance board marked the two lows that mattered today. The ES hourly bull 7704.75 printed at 8:29 a.m. ET, touched at 7704.50. That was ES's low for the whole session. The NQ hourly bull 29399.25 printed at 9:45 a.m. ET, touched at 29391.75. That was NQ's low for the whole session, and NQ ran 511.75 points off it to 29,903.50 by 10:30. Both lows came a quarter point over Friday's settles. In the New York cash session, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, PonoTrading's imbalance board sent 17 setups: 16 hourly, 1 Daily, and 0 Weekly to Discord. MedianReclaim added 14 Daily median tags and 4 Weekly median tags in cash (19 SENT rows; one was a repeat tag of the same crude median, counted once). Four of the 17 cash prints were on the index board. Across the full session, Monday's 6 p.m. ET reopen to Tuesday's 4:30 p.m. ET, the board sent 38 SENT prints: 36 hourly, 2 Daily, 0 Weekly, and MedianReclaim sent 23 Daily and 6 Weekly median tags (33 SENT rows, four repeats counted once). Seventeen of those UW prints were the overnight prints we counted in this morning's prep (16 hourlies, 1 Daily, 0 Weekly). Every count is a SENT alert from imbalance-alert-router → Discord.

The sell levels didn't hold up as well. The YM hourly bears at 52465 (9:41 a.m.) and 52546 (9:50 a.m.) both failed inside 12 minutes, and YM ran to 52,920. The RTY hourly bear 2779 printed at 10:23 a.m. and RTY went right through it to 2,799. The Dow and the Russell futures both closed outside the top of their daily expected moves.

Here's the backdrop. The Dow rose 529.85 points, or 1.0%, to 52,495.88. The Russell