Those prints are hedges. Market participant holds equities position and buys insurance through options. Options market maker writes the opts and has temporary risk exposure. The opt mm firm's risk manager immediatly sends instruction to employee whose job it is to buy/ sell index futs to lay off temporary risk. The price doesn't matter as his instructions will be to get net L/S X cars of ES/NQ depending on whatever opts were written. At the end of every day they will be net neutral their exposure till they write opposing opts, then they take the futs off. This goes on all day, the futures price has nothing to do with the operation. It is a continuous ameliorating of temporary risk exposure all day long. You see it in the morning because there is new risk from Europe and cleaning up the remainders from the previous day as thier risk profiles morph. The results of this function causes arbs to get involved further skewing the prices and the game goes on. Options can affect stock prices more deeply than most realise. There is a guy on this site , jim c, whose job it is to buy/sell futs for an opts mm. Maybe he can jump in and explain it thoroughly and correct any errors I've made.
Also, this is why eqiuties index futs are generally a TA play and not a fundamental play. I don't want to argue about it.
