Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are lower;
• The odds are for an up day – a bounce from oversold levels; extreme volatility – watch for break below 2327.00 and break above 2401.00
• Key economic data due:
  • Philly Fed Manufacturing Index ( -12.7 vs. 9.5 est.; prev. 36.7) at 8:30 AM
  • Unemployment Claims ( 281K vs. 220K est.; prev. 211K) at 8:30 AM
  • CB Leading Index (est. 0.1%; prev. .8%) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2359.75, 2305.91 and 2280.52
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2409.81, 2453.57 and 2470.29
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2415.00, the high of 4:30 AM and break below 2327.00, the low of 8:00 AM

Pre-Open

• On Wednesday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June 2020) closed at 2392.75 and the index closed at 2398.10 – a spread of about -5.25 points; futures closed at 2401.50 for the day; the fair value is -8.75
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are lower – at 9:00 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -53.25; Dow by -390 and NASDAQ by -106.50

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed down
• European markets are mostly lower – Italy and Switzerland are 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 NatGas Silver Palladium Coffee	Gold Copper Platinum Sugar Cotton Cocoa

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield is at 1.190%, down from March 18 close of 1.266%;
  • 30-years is at 1.835%, down from 1.897%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.479% down from 0.548%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.711 down from 0.718
• VIX
  • Is at 79.30 up +2.85 from March 18 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 lower on Wednesday, March 18 in mostly higher volume. NASDAQ Composite traded in lower volume.

The indices gapped down at the open and the though the gap was closed during the day, indices made multi-year low. Indices recovered by the end and most made small real body candles with long lower shadow and small upper shadows.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 fell 5.2% on Wednesday, although it did drop as much as 9.8% intraday as pandemic fears continued to hit not only stocks but also Treasuries and commodities. A strong finish also pared losses in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (-6.3%) and Nasdaq Composite (-4.7%) but did little for the Russell 2000 (-10.4%).

[…]

Selling was widespread and was made most pronounced in the cyclical energy (-14.3%), financials (-8.7%), and industrials (-7.2%) sectors. The energy space was crushed by the 24.4% collapse in WTI crude ($20.42/bbl, -$6.06), which fell to its lowest level since 2002. The communication services sector (-2.8%) declined the least today.

[…]

The 2-yr yield rose seven basis points to 0.52%, and the 10-yr rose 27 basis points to 1.27%. The U.S. Dollar Index rose 1.4% to 100.97.

[…]

• Housing starts were stronger than expected in February at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.599 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.475 million), yet they were down 1.5% m/m and will be expected to drop further in March. Building permits were weaker than expected at 1.464 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.480 million) and were down 5.5% m/m.
o The key takeaway from the report is that it will be largely dismissed on the grounds that it is “old” data in a new world that is dealing with economic shutdown measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.
• The weekly MBA Mortgage Applications Index declined 8.4% following last week’s 55.4% surge.