Stocks Closed At Record Highs, Here's What July Looks Like For The S&P 500

The S&P 500 closed at a record level today of 6173.07 which breaks the previous high set this past February at 6147.43. Here's what July looks like for the S&P 500 (SPX) according to the COT reports as well as market maker positioning. We can see below that commercials (red subgraph) are and have been positioned net long the S&P futures (/es) and have maintained that positioning this week while large speculators (blue) and small speculators (yellow) remain net short, despite the market closing at record highs.

/es COT positioning as of 6/27/25

This is also the case for both the DOW (/ym) and Russell 2000 (/rty) -

/ym COT positioning as of 6/27/25

/rty COT positioning as of 6/27/25

However the Nasdaq 100 (/nq) shows some signs of profit taking by commercials and an uptick in retail longs -

/nq COT positioning as of 6/27/25

Despite this the options market remains in an incredibly strong position as net dealer hedging is overwhelmingly positive for the indexes -

SPY dealer positioning for July opex (6/27

QQQ dealer positioning for July opex (6/27

IWM dealer positioning for July opex (6/27

This strong net hedging as well as positive gamma indicates that barring any sort of major catastrophe, dips will be supported and strength will beget strength which can invoke a positive feedback loop from now until at least the middle of the month when these options expire. These supportive market maker flows in combination with overcrowded short seller positioning in the futures market can create the perfect storm for a continued summer melt up. This is further exacerbated by happening during a time where holidays and summer vacations are already working to naturally keep trading volumes low and market volatility suppressed. This of course does not mean to blindly buy into longs without consideration. Rather, consider strategically taking advantage of dips and/or consolidation patterns that can resolve higher assuming no technical damage is done to those respective charts or tickers. Disclosure - I am positioning long the market via various index ETF's as well as a few individual tickers with a small volatility hedge against them. 🔐For access to premium trading content including swing trade alerts & live day trading room visit 👉 - https://www.carnivoretrades.com/ 

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