Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are essentially moving sideways for the past few days
• The odds are for a sideways to down day; watch for break above 3095.75 and below 3075.75 for clarity
• Key economic data due:
  • PPI (0.4% vs. 0.3% est.; prev. -0.3%) at 8:30 AM
  • Core CPI (0.3% vs. 0.2% est.; prev. -0.3%) at 8:30 AM
  • Unemployment Claims (225K vs. 215K est.; prev. 211K) at 8:30 AM
  • Fed Chair Powell Testimony to Congress

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 3087.27, 3078.80 and 3073.58
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 3098.06, 3102.61 and 3109.56
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 3095.75, the high of 8:30 PM and break below 3085.50, the low of 2:00 PM on November 13

Pre-Open

• On Wednesday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future closed at 3092.50 and the index closed at 3094.04 – a spread of about -1.50 points; futures closed at 3095.50 for the day; the fair value is -3.00
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are lower – at 8:30 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -5.00; Dow by -44 and NASDAQ by -16.00

Markets Around The World

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

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 1.870%, down from November 12 close of 1.909%;
  • 30-years is at 2.351%, down from 2.384%
  • 2-years yield is at 1.634%, down from 1.658%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.236 down from 0.251
• VIX
  • Is at 13.33 up from November 13 close of 13.00; above 5-day SMA
  • Recent high was 13.95 on October 31; recent low was 12.07 on November 8

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mixed on Wednesday, November 13 in higher volume. Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index closed higher. The day’s price range was small. Indices opened down and made days low in early trading and then mostly traded higher for rest of the day.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 (+0.1%) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.3%) closed at record highs on Wednesday, even as trade reports revealed that the U.S. and China continue to waver on familiar issues. Walt Disney (DIS 148.72, +10.14, +7.3%) deserves some credit, with shares rising more than 7% after it said 10 million users have already signed up for Disney+.

The Nasdaq Composite (-0.1%) and Russell 2000 (-0.4%) finished slightly lower.

[…]

U.S. Treasuries finished the session higher as part of the defensive trade today. The 2-yr yield declined two basis points to 1.63%, and the 10-yr yield declined four basis points to 1.87%. The U.S. Dollar Index finished little changed at 98.33. WTI crude increased 0.4% (+$0.23) to $57.08/bbl.

[…]

• Total CPI was up 0.4% m/m in October (Briefing.com consensus +0.3%), driven largely by higher energy costs, while core CPI, which excludes food and energy, increased 0.2%, as expected. The monthly changes left the yr/yr changes at 1.8% for total CPI (up from 1.7% previously) and 2.3% for core CPI (down from 2.4% previously).
o The key takeaway from the report is that consumer inflation is firming up, but it isn’t turning up yet to an actionable, rate-hike degree for the Federal Reserve.
• The weekly Mortgage Applications Index jumped 9.6% following a 0.1% decline in the prior week.
• The Treasury Budget for October showed a deficit of $134.5 billion versus a deficit of $100.5 billion in the same period a year ago.
o October marks the start of fiscal year 2020 for the government. The budget deficit over the last 12 months is $1.018 trillion.