Post-OPEX SetupE-mini Nasdaq-100 FuturesCME_MINI:NQ1!DrWaIIstreetLast week wasn’t real strength. It was a mechanical grind. Low volume, slow push up, no expansion. That’s typical into OpEx when dealers are long gamma and price gets pinned around key strikes. Every push gets sold, every dip gets bought, and the market just drifts. That kind of move can look bullish if you’re only watching price, but it’s mostly positioning doing the work, not actual demand. Now that OpEx is out of the way, that support starts to fade. Gamma rolls off, hedging flows back off, and price isn’t as controlled. That’s when things usually start to move. This is where the “market is not the economy” point really matters, especially right now. You had a week where price grinded higher into all time highs, while at the same time you’ve got geopolitical tension, conflict involving Iran, uncertainty globally, and oil sitting elevated. Normally, people expect markets to react negatively to that kind of backdrop. But instead, price just kept drifting up. That’s where people get pulled into the wrong conclusion. They start tying price action to fundamentals, assuming large institutions think the economy must be strong, outlook must be improving, and that it makes no logical sense in our current environment . For the people that kept trying to short this move and got stopped out multiple days in a row, this is exactly how that environment is designed to work. In a pinned, positive gamma market, price doesn’t break cleanly, it grinds. You get just enough downside to bait shorts in, then it reverses and squeezes back up, over and over. That’s not random, that’s flows. A lot of those failed shorts end up turning into fuel for the move higher as they’re forced to cover, which adds to the slow squeeze effect. It’s frustrating because you can be directionally right and still lose money if you’re early in that kind of structure because you don't understand what was driving it. Short term, the market is driven by positioning, liquidity, and flows far more than headlines. The grind higher happened because of options structure, not because risk suddenly disappeared or fundamentals improved. Oil is a good example of that disconnect. Elevated oil typically feeds into inflation concerns and pressure on equities, but the market didn’t really care last week because it was pinned. That kind of divergence usually doesn’t last once the mechanical support is gone. If you assume price = fundamentals, you build a bias that the move is real and should continue. That’s how people end up chasing highs or getting too comfortable long into what is actually a fragile move. Once that structure is removed, there’s not much underneath it. That’s where things can shift fast. I’m also watching earnings here. I expect earnings to be heavily sold into, whether they come in good or bad. In this kind of environment, it’s less about the numbers and more about positioning and expectations. If the market has been mechanically supported into highs, earnings can easily turn into a liquidity event where sellers show up regardless of the headline. So instead of asking “are things strong,” the better question is “what was holding price up, and is it still there?”, and right now, a big part of that answer just expired. I’m looking for a move lower from here, something in the range of 350-450 points, targeting 26,454. If we start losing the recent highs and dips don’t get bought the same way, that’s usually the shift. Main thing I’m watching is whether volatility expands and price starts moving more freely. If it does, this kind of unwind can be quick.