Futures lean risk-on into the open

S&P futures are higher at +0.60%. VIX at 15.00 prices calm. SPY opens between the 765 put wall and the 769 call wall — those are the day’s magnets.

Everything below is generated from the same data our desk trades on: the overnight session, dealer positioning, the early movers, and the filings and options tape from the prior session.

No closed winners on Wednesday Aug 26.

Levels are the overnight session against the prior settle, captured at 7:00 AM Central. Treasury yield and the dollar set the tone for rate-sensitive groups before the equity open.

Dealer positioning from listed options open interest. Heavy call strikes act as magnets-then-ceilings when spot trades below them; heavy put strikes mark where hedging flows tend to defend. The walls are the largest single-strike concentrations near the money.

The names moving on volume in the early tape. Gap continuation and gap fade both start from this list — what matters is which of these hold their opening range.

Grouped by day, then by session — before the open, during hours (slot unconfirmed), after the close. Coverage is every reporter in roughly the top 1,000 by market cap (the large-cap index universe). 36 smaller names reporting in the window are excluded; the full list is available on request. Where a name is on our coverage list, the one-line read is ours.

Drift book. Post-earnings drift positions our model is still tracking (10-session window from the report date).

Industrials leads over the window at +1.09%; Health Care brings up the rear at −0.98%. Rotation, not direction, is usually the earlier tell.

The freshest disclosed buys from corporate insiders and Congressional filers, sized by dollars committed. Filing-date entries retain most of the historical edge; scheduled 10b5-1 activity is labelled and should be discounted.

Our scanner watches the listed options tape in real time for sweeps and blocks hitting at the ask or the bid across the most liquid underlyings. Wednesday it flagged 666 qualifying prints, the largest a $3,947,872 single order. The live tape runs on the dashboard during market hours.

Prior-session and five-day extremes. The prior high and low are the first reference points for the open; the five-day range frames the swing.

The open belongs to whoever pre-committed. Futures are higher; the walls and prior-session levels above are the map. Take the trade only where a level and a catalyst agree — and size as if the first read is wrong.