Mea culpa week. I got Crude badly wrong in last weekend’s video, and this is the 19 July 2026 entry in the Weekly Futures Market Recap series where I own the mistake and walk through what the Professionals were actually doing across the 15 largest futures markets. The short version: news-driven Big Pro Bars fooled my Crude short setup, the weakest CPI print in 6 years moved rates-sensitive markets, and only Bitcoin and Ethereum are trending. Follow the Professionals, Fade the Amateurs.
TL;DR – This Week’s 3 Calls
- Emini: still an uptrend. No Professional profit taking at the highs yet. 7310 support is the line that matters, 7600-7620 is the ceiling. Wait for cyclical support and a bounce.
- Natural Gas: Signal Long. Big Pro Bars came in at $2.84 with an exhaustion signal. Watching for a push through $3 as the energy complex stays strong.
- Wheat: exhaustion under the lip. After the run to almost 700, the reverse-of-a-bouncing-ball signal is in. Watching for a break of the lows to start the roll lower.
Macro Setup This Week
The big news was CPI inflation coming in at its weakest level in 6 years. That shocked a lot of people and forced a re-rating of the whole inflation path, which flows straight into interest rates, bonds and real estate. The clearest tell was IYR, the real estate ETF, which had been doing nothing at $102-$103 for weeks after an exhaustion sell and Rambo patterns at the highs. It jumped on the CPI release. Meanwhile equities weakened and failed at the recent highs, the ags refused to roll over on schedule, and the only trades working right now are long Ethereum, which is busting to new highs, and Bitcoin, which is still pushing its highs with little profit taking.
Market-by-Market Breakdown
ES – Emini S&P 500 Futures: Rejected at 7600, Still No Pro Selling
The Emini sold off this week but the call is still an uptrend, because the Professionals have not taken profits at the highs. Daily chart: Friday’s bar was not as bad as it looked – it did not close on its lows. The blue Professional bar with an exhaustion sell and the 7310 support behind it remain the key structure. 135-minute: squeeze patterns with Amateur bars at the highs – Amateurs bought the 7600 breakout and the market weakened from there, with Better Momentum reading -45,000, flush-pattern territory. Pullback to end of trend is in play on all three timeframes. 45-minute: price is playing down into June’s Big Pro Bars after Rambo patterns pushed the highs, with 7310 about 170 points away. 15-minute: gray background, downtrend – Big Pro Bars came in on the retrace, not on the way down, which is weak. 13,500 tick bar (the source of truth): Big Pro Bars tested into 7620, we weakened, and there are still no blue Professional bars at the lows. Until the lows of those earlier blue Professional bars are taken out, the uptrend call stands. These reads all come from the Better Trading Indicators on the charts.
CL – Crude Oil Futures: Mea Culpa – News-Driven Pro Buying
I got Crude badly wrong last week. Normally Big Pro Bars arriving on a retrace signal weakness and set up a short. But these Big Pro Bars hit exactly when the Middle East ceasefire fell apart – that was Professionals buying a news-driven breakout, not a short covering rally, and I missed it. Price pushed into the highs at $78 and stayed strong into the low $80s. On the long-term chart the $110 war-announcement high printed an exhaustion buy with bearish divergence, Amateur bars sat at the low, and a big blue Professional bar breakout shadow (the same structure we saw on Silver and Gold) is still working: the low of the shadow has been tested, the highs are next. Pullback to end of trend needs to run its course – $90, maybe $100 – before any top call. Too early to fade it.
NG – Natural Gas Futures: Big Pro Bars at $2.84, Signal Long
Natural Gas flipped this week. It had been signalling short, but Big Pro Bars came in at $2.84 with an exhaustion signal and produced a Signal Long. With Crude also strong, the whole energy complex looks firm. The test now is whether Natural Gas can push through the $3 area on the back of this week’s Professional buying.
ZN – 10-Year Notes Futures: CPI Rally, Watching for the Mirror Image Low
The 10-Year Notes caught the CPI shock directly. Professionals had been getting short, then blue Professional bars stepped in just before the announcement and the market rallied, backgrounds now in red. The ideal structure from here is a mirror image of how the top was built: another push down into the zone where the Pros were getting short, met by Big Pro Bars at the lows. They have not come back in with size yet. Not everyone has changed their tune on inflation – one look at the Crude chart explains why – so expect this level to be fought over.
GC – Gold Futures: Pros at the Lows, Needs 4,100 to Get Going
Gold was supposed to rally off last week’s blue Professional bars at the lows. Instead a failed Big Pro Bar printed and price sold down to 4,000, where more blue Professional bars appeared. The Pros are taking their time and putting people under pressure, but they are clearly accumulating at these lows. The trigger is 4,100 – Gold needs to get through that level for the rally to get going.
SI – Silver Futures: Not Joining In
Silver is not joining the party. Last week’s Big Pro Bars at the lows gave way to a push even further down to $56, with only one small blue Professional bar – and it was not on the way down, which weakens the read. Until Silver confirms the same accumulation Gold is showing, the metals rally call stays on hold.
BTC – Bitcoin Futures: Holding $65K, No Big Pro Bars at the Highs
Bitcoin is one of the few charts behaving. The low was made on Big Pro activity and price has been bouncy between $63K and $65K. There is some Professional profit taking into the highs, but no Big Pro Bars at the highs yet – which means no top signal. Along with Ethereum busting to new highs, crypto is carrying the book this week.
ZW – Wheat Futures: Exhaustion Under the Lip
Wheat refused to roll on schedule. The plan was a Signal Short below 624, but the market ran up to almost 700 instead, printing blue Professional bars at the highs with exhaustion buying and bearish divergence. Now we have a signal and price is testing – exhaustion under the lip, the reverse of a bouncing ball. If Wheat gives up and breaks through these lows this week, the roll lower is on.
ZS – Soybeans Futures: Killing Fields Setup?
Soybeans looked to be rolling over into the end of last week, then gapped up on the Sunday open and came back to the highs. Backgrounds are red, so technically still an uptrend, but the exhaustion buying with bearish divergence suggests the Professionals may be running a killing fields pattern – jamming the market up and using the activity to get short. The break below 1184-1185 on the way down showed profits were taken there. Watching for downside follow-through.
6E – Euro Futures: Stair Step Short Below 1.145
The Euro printed a whole bunch of blue Professional bars last week that I said were in the wrong place. The market tested, rallied into 1.15 with blue Professional up bars in an odd pattern, and has weakened since. A stair step trade is now in progress. The level to watch is a break below 1.145, then 1.1425, to confirm a downtrend on the Euro.
Pattern of the Week: News-Driven Big Pro Bars
The Crude mistake is the lesson of the week. Big Pro Bars on a retrace are normally a sign of weakness – Professionals selling into strength. But when Big Pro Bars land at the exact moment of a news shock, like the Middle East ceasefire falling apart, they can mean the opposite: Professionals buying the breakout. Context decides. The bars tell you the Pros are active; the news tells you which side they are on. When a Big Pro Bar coincides with a headline, do not assume the usual pattern – check whether price follows through in the direction of the news before following the Pros into the trade.
Looking Ahead to the Week of 20 July 2026
Licking wounds and playing it safe until some really nice signals set up. The watch list: how deep the equities dip runs before the Professionals get interested, whether the Emini holds 7310, whether Natural Gas clears $3, whether Gold can take out 4,100, and whether Wheat breaks its lows to start the ags roll. Only Bitcoin and Ethereum are trending – respect that until the rest of the board catches up.
Full Transcript (click to expand)
Full transcript of the video above, cleaned for readability.
Intro (00:00): Okay, everyone. It’s early on Sunday, 19 July 2026, just gone 1:10 AM Chicago time. Time for another weekend futures market recap – we’ll go through the 15 largest futures markets and I’ll show you what I’m seeing on my charts. Well well well, I got Crude badly wrong in last weekend’s video. Apologies, mea culpa. We’re going to go through that chart and the learnings I’m taking away from it. The market really didn’t cooperate this week: the ags didn’t sell off like I was expecting, equities weakened and didn’t get through the recent highs. The only things going right for me are Ethereum, which is long and busting to new highs, and Bitcoin, still pushing highs without much profit taking. The big news this week was CPI inflation – the weakest print in 6 years, which shocked a lot of people. Forecasts are being re-evaluated a lot weaker than expected, and that affects interest rates, bonds and the real estate market.
IYR Real Estate ETF (01:16): The first chart is IYR, the ETF covering the real estate market. It’s been doing nothing for a while, sitting at about $102-$103. We had a signal a couple of weeks ago – it sold off with an exhaustion sell, came up to new highs with Rambo patterns, then did nothing. That was significant resistance at a previous high. With the CPI release and people expecting rates to be lower, which is good for real estate, the ETF jumped this week. I follow this chart every day when looking at the rotation of macro assets, and it had been boring up until this week.
Remembering Sam Neill (02:14): Very sad news this week – Sam Neill passed away at 78. He’s actually a New Zealand actor but we almost count him as Australian, he’s been in so many Australian films. Quite some time ago, Mrs Emini-Watch used to have business meetings at a beautiful little restaurant called the Oyster Bar next to the Opera House by Circular Quay. One day she was waiting to be seated, standing behind a gentleman who moved his chair back and accidentally put the chair leg right on her foot. She screamed, he turned around absolutely mortified – it was Sam Neill, having lunch with his best friend Brian Brown. She had no idea who he was. When she left with her business colleague, they found out the bill and a very generous tip had been paid by Sam Neill. A genuinely super nice guy and a real gentleman – he’d seemingly recovered from his cancer diagnosis and was taken down by pneumonia at 78, which frankly is not very old. I just want to remember him that way.
Emini Daily Chart (04:36): We’ve sold off, but that Friday bar is not as bad as it seems – it didn’t close on the lows. The blue Professional bar down here with the exhaustion sell is super important, and the support at 7310 backing it up is super important. We’re going through a bit of weakness right now. Once the cycles come into play they usually work themselves out – we’re playing down on the cycle on the lowest timeframe with resistance above. We have to sit tight until cyclical support comes in and we bounce from there. My mind: still in an uptrend, we just have to wait this weakness out.
Emini 135-Minute Chart (05:27): Squeeze patterns up here with Amateur bars at the highs. Just like the earlier Rambo patterns with Amateur bars, they were buying the breakout at 7600 and we weakened from there. Better Momentum read -45,000, which is getting down to the readings where we normally see something like a flush pattern – let’s wait and see. We’re sitting underneath the triple resistance I talked about last week: pullback to end of trend on the lowest, intermediate and highest timeframes all coming together, and we’ve balked at getting through 7600.
Emini 45-Minute Chart (06:12): There are the Big Pro Bars back in June that we’re playing down into. Rambo patterns on this timeframe pushed us to those highs and we’ve weakened from there, with resistance on the highest timeframe. Cyclical support on the intermediate and highest timeframes still needs to come in. That was an exhaustion sell, maybe getting a little move going. 7310 is going to be important – about 170 points away from where we are at the moment.
Emini 15-Minute Chart (06:58): The vertical solid yellow lines mark the beginnings and ends of the week. With last week’s activity I thought we’d get through those Rambo patterns and break to new highs – did not work out that way. We came down with exhaustion. We test and test and then finally it gives way. Backgrounds in gray – we’re in a downtrend. Big Pro Bars came in, but on the retrace, not on the way down, so that’s weak. It looks like we’ll need an exhaustion signal to mirror the earlier one before this gets going. Painful to go through, seeing the market not playing out how I expected.
Emini 13,500 Tick Bar Chart (07:42): This is the source of truth. Up into those highs, Big Pro Bars testing into 7620, then we weakened – backgrounds in gray, downtrend. We need Big Pro Bars mirroring that profit taking at the highs to come in at the lows, and we’re not seeing anything yet. No blue Professional bars on this little pivot. An exhaustion buy printed but wasn’t followed up with blue Professional bars, which is a shame. My call is still that the Emini is in an uptrend, because we have not seen profit taking by blue Professional bars at the highs on the way up – those blue Professional bars were almost catching the lows, and their lows have not been taken out yet, though we’re coming close. Play it by ear.
Crude Oil (08:42): Mea culpa, mea culpa. What happened? Normally Big Pro Bars coming in on the retrace are a sign of weakness, and there was our signal after that. However, this was driven by the news – the Big Pro Bars came in when the ceasefire in the Middle East fell apart. That could be Big Pro Bars buying the move to get it going. Coming into those highs at $78 it’s still strong into the low $80s, and we don’t have an exhaustion buy at that point. Cyclically it’s resistance on a whole bunch of timeframes, so potentially this rolls over and weakens from $78. But the mistake I made was not seeing that this was news-driven – Professionals buying the breakout rather than a short covering rally with the big Pros getting short. We didn’t get that follow-through. On the long-term chart: the war announcement high at $110 with an exhaustion buy and bearish divergence, weakened from there, Amateur bars right at the low – actually a whole series of Rambo patterns getting short on the timeframe below, the 4400-tick and 60-minute charts. And there’s a big blue Professional bar breakout shadow – we’ve seen this on Silver, on Gold – usually the low of the shadow is tested and then the high gets tested. We’ve come close with the test into that zone, so next is a test into those highs. Cyclically, pullback to end of trend on the lowest timeframe is synced with cyclical resistance on the highest timeframe. The bars are still red so we’re technically in an uptrend. Does it go to $90? $100? I don’t know, but that energy needs to play out before we could start to roll over. The support levels are holding on the daily timeframe, so it’s too early to call weakness. I’ll be watching Crude more frequently for that important turn. Bad call on my part.
Natural Gas (11:31): Natural Gas also looks interesting down here. It was starting to signal short – we talked about that in last weekend’s video. But with this week’s activity the Big Pro Bars came in at $2.84 with an exhaustion signal, and we got a Signal Long. The whole energy complex looks strong at the moment. Let’s see if Natural Gas can get through $3 or so with this week’s activity.
10-Year Notes (11:58): Let’s talk about the 10-Years because of that CPI number. Professionals were getting short, then some blue Professional bars stepped in just before the news announcement on the CPI, and we rallied from there – blue Professional bars, backgrounds in red. I’d like this to be a mirror image of the top being made: they were selling into the highs and getting short into the lows, and now they need to come back into the lows with Big Pro Bars. They haven’t yet, and we’re coming back to the zone where they were getting short. The fundamental news has changed, but let’s see if they push it down for another go into those lows and the Big Pro Bars come in. Not everybody has changed their tune on 10-Year Notes – some still think inflation will be more of a problem, and when you look at the Crude chart you can understand that.
Gold (12:51): I expected Gold to start to rally because we had blue Professional bars at the lows last week. But no – a failed Big Pro Bar came in, and then we sold down again to 4,000 with more blue Professional bars there. They’re taking their time getting this going, putting people under pressure. Let’s see if Gold gets through 4,100 for this rally to get going, because the Pros were definitely in at those lows, even after pushing it down further.
Silver (13:27): Similar story – did not get going this week. Last week we had the Big Pro Bars at the lows, then we pushed even further through those lows down to $56, with one little blue Professional bar – but it wasn’t on the way down. Silver is not joining in. I was expecting the metals to get going this week; did not happen.
Bitcoin (13:43): Bitcoin is doing okay, still at $65K with weekend activity going on. I showed you the low being made by the Big Pro activity, and price hasn’t come back into those lows. It’s been bouncy, coming in at $63K to $65K. Some profit taking by Professionals into the highs, but no Big Pro Bars at the highs yet on Bitcoin.
Wheat and the ags (14:07): The ags didn’t work out either. I was expecting them to set up for a roll this week – with those Big Pro Bars, below 624 would have been a great area for a Signal Short. But no, Wheat kept going up to almost 700, then more blue Professional bars at the highs, exhaustion buying, bearish divergence. We got a signal and we’re testing – this is exhaustion under the lip, the reverse of a bouncing ball. Let’s see if Wheat gives up and gets through these lows this week.
Soybeans (14:45): Soybeans I thought started to roll over into the end of last week, then gapped up on the Sunday open and came back into the highs. Backgrounds in red, still an uptrend, but we put in exhaustion buying with bearish divergence. The Professionals might have been using this activity as a killing fields type pattern – jamming the market up and using all of this activity to get short – and the break below 1184-1185 on the way down showed they did take profits there.
Euro (15:25): We saw a whole bunch of blue Professional bars last week and I said they were in the wrong place. We tested and tested, then rallied with blue Professional up bars – a very odd pattern – and then weakened. There’s a stair step trade going on. Let’s wait and see if the Euro breaks down through 1.145 and gets going to the downside. That was blue Professional bars into 1.15 and we’ve weakened from there, so we could be looking for a break below 1.145, then 1.1425, for a downtrend.
Wrap-Up (16:01): Hope your trading is going well. I’m going to lick my wounds this week and just play it safe until we get some really nice signals working out. And let’s see what the equities market does – how much of a sell-off we’ll have to sit through before the Professionals are interested in getting in on this little dip.
Want These Calls With the Indicators I Use on the Charts?
Every read in this recap – the Big Pro Bars, the exhaustion signals, the Amateur bars buying the 7600 breakout – comes straight off the Better Trading Indicators. They plot Professional and Amateur activity from CME average trade size data directly on your charts, so you can Follow the Professionals and Fade the Amateurs in 15 futures markets. Available for TradeStation, NinjaTrader and TradingView.
