Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are lower; moving lower since 8:30 PM on Tuesday
• The odds are for a sideways to up day – watch for break above 2987.50 and break below 2971.25 for clarity
• Key economic data due:
  • Final Wholesale Inventory ( est. 0.4%; prev. 0.4%) at 10:00 AM
  • Fed Chair’s Humphrey-Hawkins Testimony

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mixed – Shanghai, Tokyo and Mumbai closed down; Hong Kong, Sydney, Seoul and Singapore closed up
• European markets are mostly lower – France and Italy are up
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 2.054%, up from July 9 close of 2.048%;
  • 30-years is at 2.531%, up from 2.520%
  • 2-years yield is at 1.917%, up from 1.900%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.137, up from 0.134

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2972.44, 2963.44 and 2955.92
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2981.90, 2994.03 and 2995.84
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2975.75, the high of 4:00 AM and break below 2971.25, the low of 6:00 AM

Pre-Open

• On Tuesday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June contract) closed at 2983.50 and the index closed at 2979.63 – a spread of about +4.25 points; futures closed at 2982.00 for the day; the fair value is +1.50
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are lower – at 8:15 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -6.75; Dow by -59 and NASDAQ by -17.25

Directional Bias Before Open

• Weekly: Uptrend resumed
• Daily: Uptrend
• 120-Min:Side
• 30-Min: Side-Down
• 15-Min: Side
• 6-Min: Down

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mixed on Tuesday, July 9 in mostly higher volume. Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Transportation Average and NYSE Composite closed down. S&P 500, NASDAQ Composite, Russell 2000 and Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index closed higher. S&P 500 traded in higher volume.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 increased 0.1% on Tuesday, as shares of large-cap technology stocks helped the stock market overcome a slow start. Overall, there appeared to be a wait-and-see mindset for potential market-moving catalysts this week, including Fed Chair Powell’s semiannual monetary policy testimony on Capitol Hill tomorrow.

The Nasdaq Composite increased 0.5%, and the Russell 2000 increased 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.1%), however, lost ground as shares of 3M (MMM 165.70, -3.49, -2.1%) underperformed after the stock was downgraded to Sector Perform from Outperform at RBC Capital Mkts.

The stock market’s lowest levels of the day came at the open, but investors quickly bought the dip, lifting the major indices from session lows. It still looked like the S&P 500 would close lower for the third straight day, though, until a swarm of buyers in the last 30 minutes of action helped stocks close near session highs.

[…]

U.S. Treasuries finished slightly lower in another tight-ranged session. The 2-yr yield increased one basis point to 1.90%, and the 10-yr yield increased two basis points to 2.05%. The U.S. Dollar Index advanced 0.1% to 97.51. WTI crude increased 0.7% to $57.79/bbl.

[…]

• The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for June decreased to 103.3 from 105.0 in May.
• The May Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed that job openings decreased to 7.323 million from a revised 7.372 million (from 7.449 million) in April.