ES Futures Daily Plan · Aug 06, 2026
Prior value's floor at 7745.75 is the whole question: hold it and yesterday's shelf digests, lose it and 7710 opens.
ES · Sep '26 (ESU6) · data through 07:31 CT
Overnight 7748 – 7770.75 (22.75 pts) · last 7758.25 · volume 122,653
Gap +8.75 vs settle: modest against yesterday's 74.5-pt range · sitting within prior value · ON VPOC 7762
The line
Yesterday closed on its low, and the overnight spent twelve hours refusing to leave the bottom third of that value area. The session answers whether the 7745.75 low is excess or a shelf that gives way. Acceptance below it, meaning time traded and value building there, turns a two-day balance into a failed breakout.
Levels
Working:
7745.75 · prior VAL and session low
7750.00 · Aug 4–5 composite VAL
7762.00 · overnight VPOC
7765.75 · prior POC
7778.75 · prior-session LVN
7795.75 · prior VAH
Background:
7819.00 · Aug 4–5 composite VAH
7820.25 · prior high
7710.00 · Aug 4 VAL
7596.75 · 20-day composite VAH
Yesterday
A trend day down in structure, if not in violence. The open was above prior value, the initial balance was set in the first hour at the very top of the range, and everything after that was distribution lower. Price broke the IB low inside the second hour and never recovered it. The profile's fat shelf sits at the POC, well under the open, with a thinner band above it that price crossed twice and held neither time.
Twice the auction traded out above the prior VAH and twice it came straight back inside. That is rejection, and it is what killed the upside case: my prior read leaned on acceptance above 7785.75, and 76 minutes above it looked like the real thing before both probes were reclaimed. The last half hour did the damage, more than 160,000 contracts pressing into the low and settling there.
The delta picture is more interesting than the net figure suggests. Selling was steady through the middle of the range, but the heaviest two-sided fight of the day happened in the last two points, with the strongest net buying one tick above the strongest net selling. Someone met that close. A low made on a fight rather than a flush is a low worth respecting until it fails.
Overnight
Nothing happened, and that is the information. The night opened by lifting off the settle, dipped once to 7748.00 in the 20:00 CT hour, and then spent the rest of the session pinned in a ten-point band around the overnight VPOC. Volume was thin and evenly spread, with the only real pickup in the last three bars into the European morning, and that flow leaned modestly to the buy side.
The distribution sits inside the lower half of the Aug 4–5 value area, overlapping the prior POC but never reaching back to it with conviction. So the market held what it lost yesterday afternoon rather than repairing it. Almost the entire night traded above the settle, which leaves inventory long into the open with no cushion beneath.
Structure
The map reads as a staircase with one long pause. From late June the auction built and abandoned a series of one- and two-day balances up to the Jul 15–16 area, then broke down and spent a full week rotating in the low 7400s, the Jul 23–27 composite being the only real shelf in the sequence. That balance broke to the downside on Jul 29, held nothing, and then reversed hard.
What followed was three sessions of pure migration: Jul 31, Aug 3, and Aug 4, each building value entirely above the prior one, roughly 130 points of relocation per day with no overlap worth calling balance. Aug 4 and Aug 5 are the first pair to agree, and that agreement is the current composite. Its low edge is where price sits now.
Above, the untested air is the top of that same composite and yesterday's high. Below, there is no built value until the Aug 4 VAL at 7710.00, and beneath that the Aug 3 shelf near 7629.00. Price remains far above the 20-day value area, so the longer-term auction is still out of balance to the upside.
What options price
Today's band covers the working shelf comfortably in both directions: the prior VAH sits inside it, and so does the first air pocket below at 7710.00. What the day is not paid for is a return to the composite high near 7819.00 alongside a break of the floor. The cone shows tomorrow priced richer per day than today, which is the market paying for time rather than for direction. Reaching the Aug 3 shelf takes the better part of a week's priced reach.
The read
I favor rotation inside the lower half of the Aug 4–5 composite, with the prior POC and the LVN above it as the objectives, so long as 7745.75 holds on a test. The overnight built its own small distribution above the settle without extending, and balance inside prior value is the base case until someone spends time outside it.
The complication is inventory. Nearly all of the overnight traded above the settle, and one-sided overnight inventory is not usually corrected before the bell: of 48 such mornings, a quarter had unwound by the open and about a third by thirty minutes after it. That argues for an early probe down toward the settle and yesterday's low as the first business of the day, not as the day's direction.
The shape that follows is a normal-variation day opening inside value near the lower edge, with the first hour deciding whether the low is excess. The tell is what the first test of 7745.75 does with volume: a quick rejection with the low holding and price back through the overnight VPOC keeps the lean intact. Time spent below with value building down there does not.
What would change the read
Acceptance below 7745.75, thirty minutes or more with the auction unable to reclaim it, turns this into a failed two-day balance and opens 7710.00. On the other side, sustained trade above the prior VAH after two rejections there yesterday puts the composite high back in play and makes the lower shelf irrelevant.
All levels are computed as of the stated cutoff. This brief is educational market commentary, not investment advice or a recommendation. It does not consider any reader's financial situation, objectives, or risk tolerance, and past patterns described here are not a guarantee of future results. Futures and options trading carries substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor.