Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher;
• The odds are for an up day – a bounce from oversold levels; extreme volatility- watch for break below 2380.75 and break above 2499.00
• No key economic data due:

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2400.37, 2386.94 and 2319.78
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2470.29, 2529.56 and 2553.93
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2499.00, the high of 5:30 AM and break below 2380.75, the low of 1:30 AM

Pre-Open

• On Thursday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June 2020) closed at 2398.25 and the index closed at 2409.39 – a spread of about -11.25 points; futures closed at 2389.00 for the day; the fair value is +9.25
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 8:00 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +64.75; Dow by +636 and NASDAQ by +273.00

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed up; Tokyo was closed for trading
• European markets are mostly higher
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bonds
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 1.119%, down from March 18 close of 1.266%;
  • 30-years is at 1.740%, down from 1.897%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.483% down from 0.548%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.636 down from 0.718
• VIX
  • Is at 65.92 down -5.95 from March 19 close; below 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 higher on Thursday, March 19 in mixed volume. NASDAQ Composite and Russell 2000 traded in higher volume.

Most indices made small real body with long upper and lower shadows. Previous day’s lows were not breached but highs were. A break above last two day’s highs will be short term bullish.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 advanced 0.5% on Thursday in a volatile session that saw the benchmark index fall as much as 3.3% in early action and gain as much as 2.9% in the afternoon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.0%, while the Nasdaq Composite (+2.3%) and Russell 2000 (+6.8%) were the big movers today amid strong gains in technology and small-cap stocks.

[…]

The S&P 500 consumer discretionary (+3.4%) and energy (+6.8%) sectors presumably outperformed amid tactical trading opportunities and, specifically for the energy space, the 23% spike in WTI crude ($20.42/bbl, +4.71, +23.1%).

[…]

Left out of today’s advance were the defensive-oriented S&P 500 utilities (-5.5%), consumer staples (-2.9%), health care (-1.9%), and real estate (-1.4%) sectors.

U.S. Treasuries finished sharply higher after two days of aggressive selling, driving yields lower across the curve. The 2-yr yield declined 14 basis points to 0.38%, and the 10-yr yield declined 15 basis points to 1.12%. The U.S. Dollar Index advanced 1.5% to 102.67, as demand remained strong for the world’s reserve currency.

[…]

• Initial claims for the week ending March 14 increased by 70,000 to 281,000 (Briefing.com consensus 220,000), bolstered by the impact of the coronavirus. The unadjusted number of initial claims increased by 50,517 to 250,892. Continuing claims for the week ending March 7 increased by 2,000 to 1.701 million.
o The key takeaway from the report is that it is an early warning sign of much larger claims numbers to come considering the fact that many forced, or voluntary, business closures didn’t start to ramp up until the middle of the month with initial expectations that they will be closed at least through the end of March.
• The Philadelphia Fed Index for March dropped to -12.7 (Briefing.com consensus 10.0) from the 36.7 reading in February.
• The current account deficit for the fourth quarter totaled $109.8 billion. The third quarter deficit was revised to $125.4 billion from $124.1 billion.