Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are essentially moving sideways for the past few days; broke above the range at 6:00 PM on Thursday
• The odds are for an up day but mostly likely sideways from pre-open levels; watch for break below 3095.75 for change of fortune
• Key economic data due:
  • Retail Sales ( 0.1% est.; prev. -0.3%) at 8:30 AM
  • Core Retail Sales ( 0.3% est.; prev. -0.1%) at 8:30 AM
  • Empire State Manufacturing Index ( 6.1 est.; prev. 4.0) at 8:30 AM
  • Industrial Production ( -0.4% est. ; prev. -0.4%) at 9:15 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 3085.31, 3082.26 and 3078.80
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 3102.61, 3107.64 and 3117.07
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 3111.50, the high of 9:30 PM and break below 3095.75, the low of 6:00 PM on November 13

Pre-Open

• On Thursday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future closed at 3096.25 and the index closed at 3096.63 – a spread of about -0.50 points; futures closed at 3097.00 for the day; the fair value is -3.00
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 7:15 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +7.75; Dow by +78 and NASDAQ by +30.75

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mostly higher – Shanghai was down
• European markets are mostly higher – U.K. and STOXX 600 are down
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 1.815%, down from November 13 close of 1.870%;
  • 30-years is at 2.297%, down from 2.351%
  • 2-years yield is at 1.597%, down from 1.634%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.218 down from 0.236
• VIX
  • Is at 12.93 down from November 14 close of 13.05; 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 Thursday, November 14 in mixed volume. Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite and Russell 2000 closed down. DJIA and NASDAQ traded in higher volume. The day’s price range was small and indecisive. The indices rose near day’s end.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 (+0.1%) eked out another record close on Thursday despite Cisco Systems (CSCO 44.91, -3.55, -7.3%) dropping more than 7% after it issued downside quarterly guidance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (unch), Nasdaq Composite (unch), and Russell 2000 (unch) finished closer to their flat lines.

[…]

The turnaround in Walmart shares coincided with a measly 0.4% decline in the S&P 500 before the benchmark index mustered its way back into positive territory by late afternoon. The real estate sector (+0.8%) led the comeback effort amid another decline in Treasury yields, while the energy sector (-0.3%) fell behind amid lower oil prices ($56.76, -0.32, -0.6%).

The 2-yr yield declined five basis points to 1.58%, and the 10-yr yield declined six basis points to 1.82%. The U.S. Dollar Index declined 0.2% to 98.17.

[…]

• The Producer Price Index for final demand jumped 0.4% m/m in October (Briefing.com consensus +0.3%) while the index for final demand, less food and energy, rose 0.3% (Briefing.com consensus +0.2%). The yr/yr change for these measures checked in at 1.1% and 1.6%, respectively, versus 1.4% and 2.0% in September.
o The key takeaway from the report is that its surprise potential was mitigated by the prior release of the CPI data; moreover, the monthly headline surprise was neutralized by the year-over-year deceleration seen in the changes for total PPI and core PPI.
• Initial claims increased by 14,000 to 225,000 (Briefing.com consensus 214,000) for the week ending November 9. Continuing claims for the week ending November 2 decreased by 10,000 to 1.683 million.
o The key takeaway from the report is the recognition that the variance in the weekly initial claims number wasn’t enough to change the otherwise supportive trend in the four-week moving average in a material way.