Gap Cleared, Walls Breached—Tape Runs Hotter Than Morning Calls Anticipated

Monday's session opened with indexes gapping into resistance and negative gamma across the board—a setup that screamed 'fade the open.' Instead, SPY punched through its 766 call wall intraday (session high 767.71), QQQ blew past 715 to a high of 715.24, and IWM walked clean through the 276–277 pin zone to trade at 278.01. The morning thesis of range-bound caution was wrong on three of three major index calls.

What's kept this rally from running away? VIX is actually up 2.74% today to 18.35 even as stocks trade near session highs—a divergence worth watching. SPY is now sitting just 0.40 below its 766 call wall and max pain level with 72.9% of 0DTE volume concentrated near that strike, creating real gravity into the close. Whether this session finishes as a genuine breakout or a failed wall test depends almost entirely on what happens in the next 90 minutes.