Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher; sideways to down 6:00 PM after gapping up more than 30 points from 5:00 PM close;
• The odds are for an up day with elevated volatility – watch for break below 2831.00 for change of sentiments
• Key economic data due:
  • CB Leading Index ( -7.1% est.; prev. 0.1%) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2851.85, 2832.60 and 2806.51
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2881.92, 2901.54 and 2929.57
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2877.25, the high of 7:00 AM and break below 2831.50, the low of 4:30 PM on Thursday

Pre-Open

• On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June 2020) closed at 2788.75 and the index closed at 2799.55 – a spread of about -10.75 points; futures closed at 2787.50 for the day; the fair value is +1.25
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 8:45 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +84.25; Dow by +794 and NASDAQ by +195.00

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed up
• European markets are higher
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bond
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 0.609%, down from April 14 close of 0.638%;
  • 30-years is at 1.210%, down from 1.275%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.219% up from 0.211%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.390 down from 0.427
• VIX
  • Is at 38.31 down -1.80 from April 16 close; below 5-day SMA;
  • Down from all time high of 85.47 on March 18
  • Risk-off

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mixed on Thursday, April 16 in mostly higher volume. Russell 2000, Dow Jones Transportation Average and NYSE Composite were down. Transports traded in lower volume. The price action was muted and NASDAQ was the best performing index with an emerging Morning Star formation.

From Briefing.com:

The stock market closed mixed on Thursday, as investors responded to another round of weak economic data by continuing to buy shares of technology companies while avoiding distressed sectors like financials and energy. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.7%, while the S&P 500 (+0.6%) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.1%) posted smaller gains. The Russell 2000 declined 0.5%.

[…]

These gains contributed the outperformance of the S&P 500 consumer discretionary (+1.9%) and information technology (+1.2%) sectors. The health care sector (+2.2%), though, advanced the most. […]

.[…]

Laggards were found in areas that have underperformed this year, specifically the energy (-4.0%), financials (-1.7%), and industrials (-0.8%) sectors.

[…]

U.S. Treasuries continued to show relative strength, pushing yields lower across the curve. The 2-yr yield declined one basis point to 0.19%, and the 10-yr yield declined three basis points to 0.61%. The U.S. Dollar Index increased 0.6% to 100.06. WTI crude declined 0.3% to $19.89/bbl.

[…]

• Initial claims for the week ending April 11 were “only” 5.245 million (Briefing.com consensus 5.000 million), down 1.37 million from the prior week. Continuing claims for the week ending April 4, meanwhile, were 11.976 million, up 4.53 million from the prior week.
o The key takeaway from the report is that the labor market is wrecked right now; and gainful employment with gainful income, which is missing for so many, is what is needed to drive an economy that relies heavily on consumer spending.
• Housing starts declined 22.3% m/m in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.216 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.300 million). Building permits were down 6.8% m/m to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.353 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.297 million).
o Building permits were better than expected because of increases for multi-unit dwellings, yet the key takeaway for this leading indicator is that permits for single-unit housing were down between 6.4% and 20.2% across all regions.
• The Philadelphia Fed Index for April plunged to -56.6 (lowest since July 1980) from -12.7 in March.