As a trader, reviewing each week as a whole is very important. It is also equally important to take a glance into what is to come the following week.

This week on Monday the bulls started to show their strength, and the overall market started to move in tandem. As the day progressed, some buying pressure did slow down, but never stopped. Once the S&P 500 futures hit 4,300, that was the first lack of strength seen by the buyers since the opening hour of the market. However, this was not a time to go lower as the market settled near the highs.

On Tuesday, the bullish momentum was carried for the majority of the middle morning and into the late morning. However, by the early afternoon the market ran into a pivotal level known as the 200-period simple moving average. At this level the market was faced with a harsh rejection where there was strong selling volume. This level proved to be significant as it ended up being the high of the week.

On Wednesday, the market was showing signs of weakness in anticipation of the release of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting minutes in the early afternoon. Once the FOMC meeting notes were released there was an initial positive reaction. The FOMC minutes showed that the Federal Reserve (Fed) was expecting a slowdown in inflation, but also expected to continue raising benchmark interest rates.

Thursday was a roller coaster when looking at the price action. Heading into options expiration (OpEx) created a lot of volatility in the early stages of the market open. Both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 fluctuated up and down before ultimately moving to the downside with the bears in control. In the late afternoon, it seemed as if the bears had decided to take the rest of the day off. This is where the bulls were able to do the majority of price movement. After dancing around point of control (POC) for hours, the bulls took back control of the S&P 500. Power hour provided a strong pull back in the market just to add the cherry on top.

To end the week of OpEx, there was strong selling pressure presented. The market had its fluctuations and pops, but ultimately was dominated by the bears. The retracement that the bears were able to make on the session brought the week itself negative and it closed that way. This was the first red week in the last four  weeks.

As we look into next week, from an economic data and earnings perspective, it is a fairly light week. However, there are two main things that should be highlighted. NVIDIA reports earnings after the close on Aug. 24 and Tesla has a 3-to-1 stock split on Aug. 25.