Monthly OpEx pins SPY at 760–770 but IWM already testing call wall

Stocks are opening Friday with a gap higher across the board — SPY is up +0.51%, QQQ +0.74%, and IWM +0.84% versus Thursday's close — heading into monthly options expiration. The setup is complicated: gold is surging +1.09% while the breadth tape is nearly empty (NYSE advancers: 34 vs 1,816 decliners), and all three major ETFs are sitting below their overnight VWAPs with bearish EMA structures intact.

Monthly expiration means the gravitational pull of max pain is real today. SPY's max pain sits at 760, well below the current pre-market print of 766.47 — and SPY's net GEX is deeply negative at -$12.82B, meaning dealers are short gamma and moves in either direction can be amplified rather than dampened. IWM is the wildcard: it's already trading above its 300 call wall, a level that historically acts as a ceiling on expiration days. The question for today isn't whether there's pinning force — there clearly is — it's whether the gap-up survives contact with those structural levels.