NQ Dec Futures September FOMC Trade Review

Date: 2026-09-17

[00:03] Well, good morning, folks. Happy Thursday. Welcome back.

All right, so we're going to take a quick look at the September 2026 FOMC for Nasdaq. We're on the daily chart here, and I want to bring a couple of things to your attention.

So this is obviously today's Thursday trading so far. This is FOMC Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday. Now I'm going to show you what I was mentioning yesterday before the 9:30 Regular Trading Hours opening session began.

So there's Monday's high, and we're going to do this in black.

Monday and Tuesday ranges

[00:47] And then Monday's low. Okay, so there's Monday's high and Monday's low for this week. Then here's Tuesday. Same bit of business. I'm going to copy that and bring it down here.

All right, and then we'll do the same thing here. So we have Monday's and Tuesday's respective intraday highs.

Now, on Wednesday, we're going to drop down into the lower time frames. Just know that this Suspension Block is what we keyed off of post-FOMC, so that's what we have there. We'll highlight that, and it'll make sense when we drop down to the 1-minute time frame.

Now drop down to the 1-minute time frame. So here at 9:21 a.m. yesterday, I stated that a large-range expansion was incoming, and not simply because FOMC was on the calendar and because of the obvious nature of FOMC. On the daily chart in NQ, we had back-to-back inside days.

Inside days and NWOG

[03:15] Okay, so here's Monday's daily low, Tuesday's daily low, Tuesday's daily high, and Monday's daily high. At this moment, we had yet to trade above Tuesday's high or Monday's high, or below Monday's and/or Tuesday's respective daily lows.

So we'll go back here and show you the New Week Opening Gap.

Now let's bring our attention back to the session leading into FOMC. FOMC is usually a two-stage delivery, and I've taught this many times before in the past.

Okay, and this is Tuesday's daily high and the relative equal highs.

Equal-high sweep setup

[05:55] So we pierced that already at 2:00, came down, and then one more time rallied back above it. Once it took out this high, we want to go back and look at any inefficiency that formed prior to that because it's going to act as an Inversion Fair Value Gap—my Inversion Fair Value Gap.

IFVG rejection characteristics

[07:47] So we were just about to take out those highs here and trade back into this Inversion Fair Value Gap, which beautifully traded up into Tuesday's high—the Fair Value Gap that formed prior to running out these relative equal highs and trading into the Inversion Fair Value Gap there.

[08:21] You saw me draw this out as well. Volume Imbalance at the low to the wick low—draw that out. The body respected the lower half. The open couldn't even touch Consequent Encroachment of that wick, and then it broke down.

Those are absolute characteristics of an Inversion Fair Value Gap, and price wilts and goes lower. What I was looking at was how we had these levels down here: Monday's and Tuesday's respective daily lows.

But we were trading down into that daily Suspension Block shaded in blue, and that was a cause for concern.

[09:02] It was also the first FOMC conference with the new Fed chair, so I was expecting a little bit of give and take—more than usual. Because of that, I was more inclined to take partials and not reach for Monday's low.

Obviously, in hindsight, it's easy to say, “Why didn't you do that?” Well, you didn't make $33,800 yesterday. I did.

So looking at the wick here down to that low, if we measure this from there—now watch what you're looking for. It's that big gap here.

Swing projection downside target

[09:40] You can see how we had already traded below that low (-1 Projection). And once it broke this, I can take this same logic and apply it here.

This is simply swing projection. That's all it is. It's not magic or anything like that.

[10:24] But there it is. There's the business right there.

All right, so that takes us down to that level there—Monday's daily low and the -1 projection of the freshly calculated swing.

Now, when we're looking at it like this, you can see how bringing us down into those levels gets us very close to the low, but not entirely to the actual low.

I was looking at several factors here. These are all things I was running calculations on with my phone, so you can see all of those levels and how they relate to what NQ did: clearing Tuesday's high, then failing to get back above it with an Inversion Fair Value Gap.

[12:04] All right, and then we'll look at the information here. You can see that the fill on the initial entry was 29,483.25, and then this one here, another three contracts at 29,483.75.

Once we cleared that low here, I wanted to take some profit right there.

Suspension block and reversal

[12:47] Then we finally broke lower. So I'm utilizing this blue-shaded area as a daily Bullish Suspension Block. Then we went a little bit lower. So there's that right there, right there, up there. See that?

And then finally, I closed it manually when price got down to a level that I felt was worthy of a close. I missed that little piece of the move there, and then ultimately it rallied right back up and came all the way back up just to take out Monday's high.

[13:35] See that? So that was the skinny. Those were the things I was looking at, the reference points I had on my notepad here. I tell you all the time, you have your notes. Keeping a clean chart is one of the things I like to work with.

But that's the business. You'll notice I also posted a little period on X to a post I made back in 2022, which I was reminded of by another student because they replied to it by sharing what they did with the market.

FOMC entry timing

[14:09] When you're trading FOMC, I believe 2:40 to 2:50 p.m. Eastern Time is usually when the sweet-spot entry forms. And you'll notice that logic right there on that high where I entered. So I'll talk to you next time. Be safe.