Writing Monday’s plan on Sunday is a good habit. The index perps are live, the weekend is quiet and there is time to think. The weakness is that the plan rests on a price read on Sunday afternoon. Monday’s bell is many hours later, and those hours are busy ones.
The perp has kept trading
The implied open is a live number. It is the perp now against the perp at the last cash close, as laid out in the perp anchor. The anchor stays fixed. The reading does not. A move that was a tenth of a percent on Sunday afternoon can be larger, smaller or reversed by Monday morning. The first recheck is the simplest: read it again and compare it with the figure the plan was built on.
Futures have reopened
Index futures restart on Sunday evening. They bring a deeper market than the weekend perp book, and they trade through the Asian and European sessions before the US open. Sometimes they confirm the weekend move. Sometimes they take it back. The perp versus Sunday night futures covers how to compare them. A Sunday plan was written before that test took place.
The calendar has turned
A plan written from price alone can miss the schedule. A release before the open, or early in the session, can move the index more than the weekend did. If one is due, the plan needs a line for it, even if the line says to wait until it has passed.
The map is still Friday’s
The gamma flip, the walls and the expected move a trader studied on Sunday were built from options open at Friday’s close. They are the right levels to plan against, because nothing newer exists. Once the session starts, the day’s contracts trade and the map updates. Levels that framed the Sunday plan are worth reading again after the open.
A short recheck
Four lines cover it. Where is the perp now against where it was on Sunday? Do the futures agree? Is the indicated open on the same side of the flip as the plan assumed? Is anything scheduled?
If all four answers match Sunday’s, the plan stands as written. If one has changed, the conditions get rewritten before the bell. That is different from improvising after it. The method of writing conditions is in planning Monday’s first hour from Sunday’s perps. The recheck keeps those conditions honest.
Where NoVo shows it
Trader shows the implied open whenever the cash market is shut, so the Monday morning reading sits in the same place as the Sunday one. Its Perps & Futures tab carries the index perps. After the bell, dealer positioning on SPY, QQQ and IWM updates on a 5-minute cycle on Trader Pro and live on Trader Max.