Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher; but down from early European sessions
• The odds are for an up day following a historic down previous day; extreme volatility;
• Key economic data due:
  • Retail Sales ( -0.5% vs. 0.2% est.; prev. 0.6%) at 8:30 AM
  • Core Retail Sales ( -0.4% vs. 0.1% est.; prev. 0.6%) at 8:30 AM
  • Industrial Production ( 0.6% vs. est. 0.4%; prev. -0.3%) at 9:15 AM
  • Capacity Utilization Rate (77.0% vs. est. 77.1%; prev. 76.8%) at 9:15 AM
  • Business Inventories (est. -0.1%; prev. 0.1%) at 10:00 AM
  • JOLTS Jobs Openings ( est. 6.40M; prev. 6.42M) at 10:00 AM
  • NAHB Housing Market Index (est. 74; prev. 74) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2397.94, 2380.94 and 2346.58
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2455.44, 2503.37 and 2562.98
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2493.75, the high of 7:00 AM and break below 2409.50, the low of 8:00 AM

Pre-Open

• On Monday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (March 2020) closed at 2387.00 and the index closed at 2386.13 – a spread of about +0.75 points; futures closed at 2405.25 for the day; the fair value is -22.25
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 8:30 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +24.00; Dow by +223 and NASDAQ by +104.50

Markets Around The World

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

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 0.728%, down from March 13 close of 0.951%;
  • 30-years is at 1.334%, down from 1.552%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.362% down from 0.502%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.366 down from 0.449
• VIX
  • Is at 81.03 down -1.66 from March 16 close; above 5-day SMA;
  • At highest levels ever

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed sharply lower on Monday, March 16 in mixed volume. Dow Jones Transportation Average and Russell 2000 traded in higher volume.

The indices opened with limit down as the 7% decline-trigger stopped trading. The indices declined the most since October 1987 and Dow Jones Industrial Average had a second largest decline in percent terms ever,

From Briefing.com:

There was a crisis of confidence in the stock market today, which led to the worst day of losses since the crash of 1987. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 12.9%, the S&P 500 fell 12.0%; the Nasdaq Composite dropped 12.3%; and the Russell 2000 plunged 14.3%.

[…]

Specifically, the target range for the fed funds rate was cut by 100 basis points to 0.00% to 0.25%, the discount rate was cut by 150 basis points to 0.25%, a $700 billion quantitative easing program is being implemented, there was coordinated central bank action to enhance liquidity via standing U.S. dollar liquidity swap line arrangements, and bank reserve requirement ratios were reduced to 0.00%, effective March 26.

[…]

The major indices all closed at, or near, their lows for the day, pressured by double-digit percentage losses in ten of the 11 sectors. The lone exception was the consumer staples sector (-7.0%); otherwise, losses ranged from 10.0% (health care) to 16.6% (real estate) in an historic day of trading. All 30 Dow components ended lower, with more than half suffering double-digit percentage losses. Boeing (BA 129.61, -40.59, -23.9%) was the biggest laggard.

[…]

• The New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey fell to -21.5 in March (Briefing.com consensus 4.7) from 12.9 in February. The dividing line between expansion and contraction is 0.0.