This is the 20 September 2026 entry in the Weekly Futures Market Recap series. We are in business: the stock market bottomed this week and I think we are heading up. Big Pro Bars and blue boxes came in right on the lows of the selloff after the Fed announcement, the mirror image of the Professional profit taking at the highs two weeks ago, and good news for crypto gave Bitcoin a risk-on rocket from 78K to 81K. The weakness we have been sitting through for three weeks is, I think, over. Follow the Professionals, Fade the Amateurs.
TL;DR - This Week’s 3 Calls
- Emini: the bottom is in, and 7739.25 is the level that confirms it. The 13,500 tick bar chart printed an exhaustion sell, blue boxes and a blue background (super high average trade size) at the Fed day lows, and Big Pro Bars bought every retrace into a 7725 close on Friday. The 135-minute and 45-minute charts are already back above resistance. I expect the 7739.25 high to be taken out in the first couple of days of the week of 21 September 2026.
- Bitcoin: once it got through 78K it rocketed to 81K, and the measured move points to 86K. A blue box got the move going off the lows near 76K on Thursday and Friday. If 76K to 81K is the first leg, the current holding pattern sits halfway and the second leg runs 81K to 86K. The longer-term charts say this can get into the 90s.
- British Pound: the Professionals are interested here, not in the Euro or the Aussie Dollar. The Pound sold off from 1.3450 to 1.3350, then printed a huge run of Big Pro Bars and an exhaustion buy at the lows. There is no uptrend and no signal yet, but it is setting up for something in the next week or so. The Euro and the Aussie Dollar are only bouncing off RAMBO patterns with Amateurs at the extremes.
Macro Setup This Week
Two announcements drove the week. The Fed announcement produced a big-time selloff in the Emini, and that selloff is exactly where the Professionals stepped in with exhaustion volume and blue boxes. The market gapped up the next day and, after some weakness, Friday ended up solid. Then came constructive news for crypto from the regulators. I think the Clarity Act failed, but the tokenization announcements came through, and Bitcoin rallied big time on Thursday and Friday. Put together, the Fed and the tokenization news were all pretty positive for the market, and it has a risk-on feel to it.
Elsewhere it was a huge week for activity. The currencies sold off hard against the US Dollar before the Professionals stepped into the British Pound and started to show up in the Japanese Yen. The 10-Year kept selling off for a fourth week. Gold and Silver bounced without much Professional backing, Copper is still trading on tariff news, and Crude pushed above 102 without any Professional profit taking at the highs.
Market-by-Market Breakdown
ES - Emini S&P 500 Futures: Big Pro Bars at the Lows, 7739.25 Next
The Emini bottomed this week and the 13,500 tick bar chart was bang on the money. Daily chart: we are in an uptrend because we are above the blue Professional bars. Better Sine Wave has printed white bars, so it has been weak for two or three days this week, but we just need to break above resistance and we are back into a confirmed uptrend on the daily chart. 135-minute: the squeeze patterns we have been looking for came in, with the support and resistance lines and price super tight together. We break out of squeeze patterns into trending moves, but sometimes there is a false move first, and I think that is what the dip was. There are three 135-minute bars in a day session, and the last third of Friday, after we bottomed, broke back above the lines and turned the bar red. That is a confirmed uptrend on the 135-minute: above the Professional bars and price above resistance, breaking into another uptrend after two weeks of weakness, maybe three from the RAMBO pattern at the top. 45-minute: the same thing going on. We have broken above resistance and above the Better Pro Am trailing stop, so the background has turned red, with a strong last bar on Friday. We came out of the squeeze patterns into a bit of a trendy move on the way down, price has bunched up, and I expect we just blast out of that next week. 15-minute: three weeks of downtrend, maybe four, just weaker and weaker. The Professionals were taking profits with blue boxes at the highs, then we had all of that junk with the island reversal last week, failed on Monday and kept on going down: Amateur bars could not buy it and could not push us through. Then the Fed announcement day: bang, a big selloff, exhaustion sell, blue Professional bars and blue boxes getting in at those lows. A gap up the next day, a little weakness, a squeeze pattern, and we blast out of that to a strong close with an exhaustion buy getting us out of this ranging move. 13,500 tick bar: I like this chart best because a tick bar chart across the day and night sessions smooths everything out and gives good visibility on the Big Pro Bars, and you can see the same thing on your own charts with Better Trading Indicators. Two weeks ago the Pros topped this out with blue Professional up bars, blue boxes and a blue background, which means super high average trade size. We got our Signal Short and followed it down for a week and a half. Blue bars took profits at the end of last week, then midweek the Pros stepped in: blue boxes, exhaustion sell, background in blue. On any weakness since, the Big Pro Bars have stepped in again, including at the end of the week. It is symmetry, the reverse of the top: up bars and blue boxes getting out, down bars and blue boxes getting in. We are in a channel at the moment and just need to get above the high at 7739.25. We closed at 7725, so I expect we take that out in the first couple of days of next week.
6E - Euro Futures: Technical Bounce off RAMBO Patterns, No Pros Yet
The Euro sold off this week. Two weeks ago we had Big Pro Bars taking profits and a Signal Short, and the Euro has been weak ever since, but so far it is only bouncing off RAMBO patterns. It sold off super hard and the Professionals have stepped in a little, but there is nothing like the same Professional activity as elsewhere: no run of Big Pro Bars and no background in blue down at these lows. What we have is a bit of a technical bounce, and the Euro is not bouncing as hard as the British Pound. Until the Pros show up in size at the lows, I treat this as a bounce inside a downtrend.
6B - British Pound Futures: Big Pro Bars and Exhaustion Buy at 1.3350
I have been short the British Pound for a week, off a nice retrace with Big Pro Bars, backgrounds in blue and squeeze patterns that were always going to break into a trending move. It started to sell off with no blue bars taking profits at the lows, and I got out way too early, as we broke down through 1.3450. It just kept on going to 1.3350. I was anxious to get out because I could see the short setting up in the Emini on the Fed day and threw everything at that, which was nice, but I could have made just as much by holding on and working the trailing stop down. Then a huge amount of activity: Big Pro Bars, bang, bang, bang, and an exhaustion buy. No uptrend and no signal yet, but it is setting up for something in the next week or so.
6A - Australian Dollar Futures: Amateurs at the Lows, Still Weak
The Aussie Dollar is the same pattern as the Euro. We had Big Pro Bars into the highs a couple of weeks ago and since then it has just been bouncing off RAMBO patterns down here. That is Amateurs playing at the extremes, not blue Professional bars stepping in. The blue Professional bars on this chart are the ones selling it down on the way, not buying new lows. Until we see them come in at the lows, the Aussie Dollar is going to be weak. It is interesting that the British Pound is where the Professionals are interested at the moment, as opposed to the Euro and the Aussie.
6J - Japanese Yen Futures: Pros Stepping In at 63.80
The Professionals are also starting to get interested in the Japanese Yen down at the lows. We had signals and Big Pro Bars up at the highs, the market sold off, and the Professionals started to step in at 63.80 and a bit with blue boxes. We have a signal there and the background has turned red, but there are no Big Pro Bars yet. So it is early interest rather than the full commitment we saw in the British Pound. I want to see the Big Pro Bars print before trusting this low.
ZN - 10-Year Treasury Note Futures: Four Weeks Down, Pros Dipping Their Toes In
The 10-Year, of course, sold off and kept on selling off. That is four weeks down into these lows. We have some Professionals starting to get interested, but no Big Pro Bars yet. They are dipping their toes in, and who knows if the down move is over. Same rule as last week: expect weakness in the 10-Year and strength in rates until the Big Pro Bars show up at the lows.
GC - Gold Futures: No Blue Boxes at the Lows, Heading Down Again
Gold had a nice couple of days off the lows, but it has not signalled and there are no Big Pro Bars, just a bounce off an exhaustion sell with bullish divergence. We are in a squeeze pattern at the moment and I think this might head down again: come out of the squeeze and head lower until we see blue Professional bars at the lows. The last time the Professionals were in, they were selling this move down. With no blue boxes happening at the lows on Gold, it is still heading down.
SI - Silver Futures: Flush Pattern, Needs More Big Pro Bars
Silver looks a little bit better than Gold. We have blue boxes, an exhaustion sell, flush patterns testing down and a Professional bar at the lows, and we have rallied from there. But I would like to see more Big Pro Bars coming in than that before calling it a proper bottom. For now it is the stronger of the two metals, with Gold still the drag.
BTC - Bitcoin Futures: Rocket From 78K to 81K, Measured Move to 86K
Bitcoin rallied big time on Thursday and Friday on constructive news from the regulators. I think the Clarity Act failed, but they have got the tokenization stuff. We came in with Amateur bars at the lows and some blue Professional bars, not blue boxes, and then the blue box came in to get the move going. As soon as it got through 78K it rocketed up to 81K. This becomes a measured move: 76K to 81K, then 81K to 86K on the way up, with the current range a holding pattern halfway into the move. It is looking strong on the long-term charts too, and I think it keeps going and gets into the 90s. Bitcoin trades over the weekend, so the chart is live and it is still going up.
CL - Crude Oil Futures: Top Is Not In, Retest of 102 to 104
I was not really looking at Crude this week because all the activity was elsewhere. We got above the high at 102, and I think 104 was the important number. At 102 there was an exhaustion buy but no blue Professional boxes. There is some weakness at the moment, but it is into RAMBO patterns, and for me that top is not in. We had Big Pro Bars coming in on the retrace at 96, so I think we have just played with that number a couple of times. If we break back up, get a blue Professional bar, trail the stop down and then break through it, a retest of 102 to 104 will be interesting this week.
NG - Natural Gas Futures: Junky Chart, Nothing to Do
Nothing much is going on in Natural Gas. It is a little bit junky, that chart, and I did not spend any time on it in the video. When the Professionals are not showing their hand there is no trade, and with this much activity in the Emini, Bitcoin and the British Pound there are better places to be looking this week.
HG - Copper Futures: Uptrend on Pro Buying at the Lows
Copper is difficult trading because it is driven by tariff news. Last week we seemingly bottomed with blue Professional down bars at the lows, and we have kept on going from there. The background is in red, so according to the chart we are in an uptrend on Copper. That is interesting, and it follows through on the early Professional buying flagged in last week’s recap, but the headline risk means I would not lean on it too hard.
ZC - Corn Futures: Big Pro Bars Sold 544, Stair Step Down
On to the ags. Corn had Big Pro Bars into last week’s high around 544 and it has fallen off from there. Since then the blue Professional bars have been happening on the retraces, which gives us a stair step down. So we are still in a downtrend on Corn, and the Professionals are selling the bounces rather than buying the lows. No reason to fight that until the pattern changes.
ZS - Soybeans Futures: Pros Getting Back In at 1300
Soybeans are looking interesting at these lows. Big Pro Bars came in last time and the low was tested and tested again. The Professionals did not take profits up at the highs, and now they are getting back in again around 1300. So let’s see if Soybeans keeps on going from here. Of the three ags it is the one where the Pros have shown the clearest interest on the buy side.
ZW - Wheat Futures: Pro Buying on the Retrace, 720 to 728 Is the Test
Wheat is a similar type of pattern to Soybeans: blue boxes at the lows, an exhaustion sell and bullish divergence. We got the initial break, came back to test, and blue Professional bars are coming in on the retrace. That is interesting. The thing to watch is whether we get back up through 720 to 728 on Wheat to keep the move going.
Pattern of the Week: The Professional Round Trip
The Emini 13,500 tick bar chart gave a textbook round trip. At the top two weeks ago: blue Professional up bars, blue boxes and a blue background, the Pros getting out into strength. At the Fed day low this week: blue Professional down bars, blue boxes, an exhaustion sell and a blue background, the Pros getting in on weakness. In between, the Amateurs tried to buy the island reversal and could not push it through. Same footprint, opposite direction, and both ends showed up as super high average trade size. That symmetry is what Follow the Professionals, Fade the Amateurs looks like on a chart: you do not need to predict the Fed, you need to see who is trading size at the extreme.
Looking Ahead to the Week of 21 September 2026
The two most important charts this week are the Emini and Bitcoin, so let’s see where they go on Monday and Tuesday. In the Emini the level is 7739.25: take that out and the channel becomes an uptrend again across the timeframes. Bitcoin is trading over the weekend, so where it closes will be interesting, and I expect a flurry of retail activity come Monday. Behind those two, watch the British Pound for a signal off the Big Pro Bars at 1.3350 and Crude for a retest of 102 to 104.
Full Transcript (click to expand)
Full transcript of the video above, cleaned for readability.
Intro (00:00): Recording on Saturday 19 September 2026, just gone 3:10 AM Chicago time. I do hope you are doing well. It is the weekend, so it is time for another weekend futures market recap. We will go through fifteen of the largest futures markets and I will show you what I am seeing on my charts. Alright, we are in business. The stock market bottomed this week and I think we are heading up. The 13,500 tick bar chart, as usual, was bang on the money. Big Pro Bars came in on the lows, with the selloff that we had after the Fed announcement. Then we had some good news in the crypto market, risk-on type stuff, and Friday, after some weakness, ended up being solid. We will get to that.
Emini Daily Chart (00:44): The daily chart here, just to remind you: we are in an uptrend because we are above the blue Professional bars. We have had white bars on Better Sine Wave, so it has been weak for two or three days of this week, but we just need to break above resistance and we will be back into a confirmed uptrend on the daily chart.
Emini 135-Minute (01:06): If you go down to the 135-minute chart, we have been looking for these squeeze patterns, and they have come in, which means that the support and resistance lines and price are super tight together. We break out of squeeze patterns into trending patterns, but sometimes we can have a little bit of a false move, and I think that is what is going on at the moment. Eventually we are going to break back above these levels. You can see the last bar. There are three bars in a day session on the 135-minute. This is the last third of the day when we bottomed on Friday, and we have broken above our support lines, so the bar has turned red. We now have a confirmed uptrend on the 135-minute timeframe. That means we are above the Professional bars and price is above resistance. So we are breaking into another uptrend, having had effectively two weeks of this weakness, maybe three weeks from that RAMBO pattern there. This is important stuff. We are starting to trend up on the 135-minute chart, and as we go down the timeframes you just see the same thing going on.
Emini 45-Minute (02:11): Here we go: broken above resistance on the 45-minute chart. We have broken above the trailing stop on Better Pro Am, so the background has turned red, and we have a strong last bar on Friday’s move off this bottom. We get some real detail on the 13,500 tick bar chart, so no need to go into it on this chart. But it is a sign of strength: we are getting above the support on the 45. We came out of these squeeze patterns into a little bit of a trendy move on the way down, we have had this bunching up here, and I am expecting we will just blast out of that next week.
Emini 15-Minute (02:47): On the 15-minute we put on the beginnings and the ends of the week as vertical solid yellow lines. What is it, three weeks we have been in a downtrend, maybe four. Two, three, four, five weeks here, just weaker and weaker. The Professionals were taking profits with blue boxes at the highs here, and at the highs here. Here it is a little bit indeterminate, mid sequence, and we had all of that junk with an island reversal last week, and we failed on Monday and kept on going down. Amateur bars cannot buy it, cannot buy it, cannot push us through, and we fail. And this is the Fed announcement day: bang, sell off big time, exhaustion sell, blue Professional bars, blue boxes, getting in at those lows. There is that compression area and the gap up the next day. A little bit of weakness here, a squeeze pattern, and we blast out of that to a strong close at the end of the week with an exhaustion buy, I think getting us going out of this ranging move and on our way.
Emini 13,500 Tick Bar (03:45): I always like this chart the best, just because having a tick bar chart across the day and night sessions smooths out everything and gives us good visibility on the Big Pro Bars. And here we go. Two weeks ago they topped out here. We had blue Professional up bars, blue boxes, Professionals taking profits up here, and the background is in blue. That means super high average trade size, and that is what we are looking for. We get our Signal Short and follow it down for a week and a half. Then down here at the lows, here we go, blue boxes pop up again. We have blue bars at the end of last week taking profits, and then midweek they step in: blue boxes, exhaustion sell, background in blue. Here we go, super high average trade size. Then this move here on the weakness that we had, we get out of that quickly, and on any weakness the Big Pro Bars step in again. This is at the end of the week, Big Pro Bars stepping in and getting this move going. So it is symmetry, the reverse of what we had up here. Up bars and blue boxes, down bars and blue boxes, Big Pro Bars getting out and getting in. We are in a channel at the moment, but we just need to get above this high. What is this number? 7739.25. We are at 7725 on the close. So I expect we will take that out in the first couple of days of next week. That is all good. Finally the weakness that we have been sitting through, I think, is over, and for me the important signal is these exhaustion sell signals and the Big Pro Bars coming in on the retrace and getting going. So that is where I stand on the Emini. We have been waiting and watching for this, and we finally got it with this week’s news. That is good.
Euro (05:25): Now, this week there was a huge amount of activity. The Euro sold off this week. Two weeks ago we had Big Pro Bars taking profits and a Signal Short, and the Euro has been weak, but we are bouncing off all of these RAMBO patterns. We sold off super hard and then Professionals have stepped in here. We do not have as much Professional activity, Big Pro Bars. I mean, there is no background in blue down here, but we are having a little bit of a technical bounce on the Euro. The Euro is not bouncing as hard as the British Pound.
British Pound (05:48): I have been short the British Pound for a week because we had this nice retrace. We had Big Pro Bars, we can see some backgrounds in blue there, and squeeze patterns, so we were going to come out of that into a trending move. We start to sell off, no blue bars taking profits at the lows here, and then we sold off, and I got out of my short way too early. I got out as we broke down through 1.3450 and it just kept on going down to 1.3350. And then a huge amount of activity, Big Pro Bars coming in here, bang, bang, bang. Exhaustion buy getting us going. We have not broken into an uptrend yet and we have not got a signal yet, but that is setting up for something in the next week or so. I was anxious to get out of that British Pound trade because I could see the short setting up in the Emini on that day, which was this move here. So I threw everything at the Emini as it was selling off, which was nice. But equally, I think I could have made just as much by holding on into this move and just working the trailing stop on the way down. So that is the British Pound, looking interesting.
Aussie Dollar (06:53): Aussie Dollar, same pattern as the Euro. We had Big Pro Bars into the highs a couple of weeks ago. We have just been bouncing off RAMBO patterns down here. So Amateurs playing at those extremes and not blue Professional bars stepping in. I would suggest these are blue Professional bars selling it down, until we see them coming in on the way down like this, down here at new lows. The Aussie Dollar is going to be weak. So, interesting: the British Pound is where the Professionals are interested at the moment, as opposed to the Euro and the Aussie.
Japanese Yen (07:21): Japanese Yen, the Professionals are also starting to get interested down at those lows. We had signals up here, Big Pro Bars here, the market sells off, and Professionals started to step in at 63.80 and a bit. We have got a signal there, but no Big Pro Bars yet on the Japanese Yen.
10-Year (07:39): The 10-Year, of course, sold off and kept on selling off. We have been down four weeks here, down at these lows. We have got some Professionals starting to get interested, but no Big Pro Bars yet down at these lows. So they are dipping their toes in, but who knows if that down move is over.
Gold (07:57): Gold also had a nice couple of days down here, but it has not signalled, no Big Pro Bars, just bouncing off an exhaustion sell and bullish divergence. We are in a squeeze pattern at the moment. I think this might head down again: come out of that squeeze pattern and head down until we see blue Professional bars at the lows, because the last time they were in, they were selling down this move. We have got no blue boxes happening at the lows on Gold, so it is still heading down.
Silver (08:23): Silver is a little bit better. We have got blue boxes, exhaustion sell, flush patterns testing down, a Professional bar. We have rallied from there, but I would like to see more Big Pro Bars coming in than that.
Bitcoin (08:35): Now, Bitcoin rallied big time on Thursday and Friday, and that was some constructive news from the regulators. I think the Clarity Act failed, but they have got the tokenization stuff. We came in with Amateur bars down here, some blue Professional bars, not blue boxes, but the blue box came in there to get this move going. And then as soon as it got through 78K, we rocketed up to 81K. So it is looking strong. Look at the long-term charts on Bitcoin to see where that is going, but it is going to keep going from that move and get into the 90s. This becomes a measured move, where we are going from 76K to 81K, and then 81K to 86K on the way up, and this just becomes a holding pattern halfway into that move. You can see it is the weekend and the market is trading on Bitcoin, so we have got data in that chart. It is live and it keeps on going up. So that is interesting.
Crude (09:31): Crude I was not really looking at this week because all the activity was happening elsewhere. We got up above the high up here at 102. I think 104 was the important number. So 102, exhaustion buy, no blue Professional boxes there. We have got some weakness happening at the moment, but it is into RAMBO patterns, and for me that top is not in. We had Big Pro Bars coming in on the retrace here at 96, so I think we have just played with that number a couple of times. If we break back up, get a blue Professional bar, trail the stop down and then break through that, it will be interesting to retest 102, 104 on Crude this week.
Natural Gas and Copper (10:11): Natural Gas, what is going on here? Nothing much. A little bit junky, that chart. Copper: difficult trading, this is tariff news driven. Last week we seemingly bottomed here with blue Professional down bars, and we have kept on going from there. We are in an uptrend on Copper according to that. The background is in red. So that is interesting.
Corn (10:35): The ags. Corn: Big Pro Bars into last week at 544, and we have fallen off from there. Blue Professional bars happening on the retrace, stair step down. So we are still in a downtrend on Corn.
Soybeans (10:49): And what are we doing on Soybeans? Looking interesting at these lows. Big Pro Bars came in last time. Tested, tested, did not take profits up here, getting back in again. So 1300. Let’s see if Soybeans keeps on going.
Wheat (11:04): And Wheat, a similar type of pattern: blue boxes at the lows, exhaustion sell, bullish divergence. We got the initial break, we come back to test, and blue Professional bars are coming in here on the retrace. So that is interesting. See if we get back up through 720, 728 on Wheat to keep going there.
Week Ahead (11:22): Losing my voice a little bit. So, an important couple of days on the market. Fed announcements and tokenization announcements, all pretty positive for the market. The two most important charts this week are the Emini and Bitcoin, so let’s see where they go on Monday and Tuesday. It should be interesting. I will be looking at the charts over the weekend. We will get a flurry of retail activity come Monday, and over the weekend on Bitcoin it might be interesting to see where that closes. So there we go. I hope your trading is going well. Looking forward to next week’s trading.
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