Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher
• Drifting up since 2:30 AM; below Monday’s high, which may act as a resistance
• Odds are for sideways to an up day – watch for break below 2502.50 for a change of fortunes
• Key economic data due:
  • Building Permits (1.30M vs. 1.22M est.) at 8:30 AM
  • Current Account (-123B vs. -115B) at 8:30 AM
  • Housing Starts (1.18M vs. 1.17M est.) at 8:30 AM
  • Import Prices (0.6% vs. 0.4% est.) at 8:30 AM

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mostly lower – Tokyo was up; the intra-day trend side to down for most except for Tokyo
• European markets are mostly higher; Germany and STOXX 600 are down; intra-day trend is sideways to up for most except Germany
• Currencies:
  

  Up	Down
  EUR/USD USD/CHF AUD/USD NZD/USD	Dollar index GBP/USD USD/JPY USD/CAD

• Commodities are mostly down
  

  Up	Down
  Crude Oil NatGas Copper Gold Silver Cotton	Platinum Palladium Sugar Coffee Cocoa

• 10-yrs yield closed at 2.229% on September 18 up from September 15 close of 2.202%; 30-years closed at 2.803% up from 2.771%

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2499.24, 2493.16 and 2490.37
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2508.32, 2512.44 and 2516.55
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2505.50, the high of 6:00 AM and break below 2502.00, the low of 4:00 AM

Pre-Open

• On Monday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (December contract) closed at 2502.25 and the index closed at 2503.87 – a spread of about 1.75 points; futures closed at 2502.75 for the day; the fair value is -0.50
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures price action is to the upside – at 8:15 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +1.75; Dow by +13.00; and NASDAQ by +5.25

Directional Bias Before Open

• Weekly: Up
• Daily: Up
• 120-Min: Side-to-Up
• 30-Min: Side-to-Up

The trend and patterns on various time frames for S&P 500 are:

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mostly higher on Monday September 18. Dow Jones Transportation Average closed lower. Markets rose in the morning session then they drifted lower before recovering some of the lost ground in the last hour. The day’s range was small. S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite made doji candles. Russell 2000 had a relatively larger green real body and DJT a red real body.

• S&P 500 Sectors