The First Trade… Nervous. But, nervous enough?

Proper context can start the day with a solid win and make all the difference.

CHARTROOM LINK
(pre-open Market Tour begins at 8:55 ET)

Through the prior close…
Rewarding the prior afternoon’s upside traction required absorbing Thursday’s pre-open dip to 1890.00, and a post-open dip to 1894.00. Recovering back above the prior session’s highs still peaked 3 ticks short of touching the 1922.50 overnight highs. The balance of the session narrowed its range into the 1908.00-1910.00 close, paralyzed by anxiousness ahead of the payrolls report. Even probing deeply into negative territory during Thursday afternoon’s bias-up environment was recovered back to its bias-up signal.

Overnight action’s new info…
As is often the case ahead of an Employment report, the narrow range persisted, albeit in slightly negative territory. The range did expand at Europe’s opens, back up to the prior afternoon’s 1914.00 bias-up target. Price has settled back into 1908.00-1910.00.

If, then…
That was a lot of pessimism Thursday. A lot of ineffectual pessimism. Not so much the morning’s attack on overnight highs, which aren’t as influential intraday. But the pre-open and post-open dips that were recovered in order to launch that attack. And the afternoon’s bias-up downtrend whose timing prevented sellers from gaining traction for the effort. It’s potentially bullish from a contrarian perspective, which suggests a positive resolution to this morning’s pre-open report. All that having been said, the pessimism that was absorbed yesterday wasn’t recovered back above any relevant levels. So, I’ll be a little reluctant to buy an initially negative knee-jerk reaction that breaks under yesterday’s lows, and a little suspicious of opening strength that isn’t recovering above prior highs.

First Trade…
No preliminary levels are considered prior to an Employment Situation report.