Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are little changed; mostly moving sideways since 1:30 PM on Wednesday with a 30-point range
• The odds are for a sideways to down day with elevated volatility – watch for break above 2805.75 and break below 2773.00 for clarity
• Key economic data due:
  • Unemployment Claims (4427K vs. 4350K est.; prev. 5245K) at 8:30 AM
  • Flash Manufacturing PMI ( 35.1 est.; prev. 48.5) at 9:45 AM
  • Flash Services PMI ( 0.5 est.; prev. 39.8) at 9:45 AM
  • New Home Sales (643K est.; prev. 765K) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2788.99, 2779.61 and 2762.10
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2815.10, 2820.43 and 2836.42
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2805.75, the high of 2:30 AM and break below 2773.00, the low of 7:30 PM

Pre-Open

• On Wednesday at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June 2020) closed at 2789.00 and the index closed at 2799.31 – a spread of about -10.25 points; futures closed at 2788.50 for the day; the fair value is +0.50
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are down to flat – at 6:45 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -1.00; Dow by -41 and NASDAQ by -7.50

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mostly mixed – Hong Kong, Tokyo, Mumbai and Seoul closed up; Shanghai, Sydney and Singapore closed down
• European markets are mixed – Germany, U.K. and Switzerland are lower; France, Spain, Italy and STOXX 600 are higher
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bond
  • 10-yrs yield closed at 0.619%, up from April 21 close of 0.571%;
  • 30-years is at 1.220%, up from 1.162%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.217% up from 0.205%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.402 up from 0.366
• VIX
  • Is at 41.51 down -0.47 from April 22 close; above 5-day SMA;
  • Down from all time high of 85.47 on March 18
  • Risk-Neutral

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mostly higher on Wednesday, April 22 in mostly lower volume. Dow Jones Transportation traded lower in higher volume.

Indices opened higher and then mostly drifted higher closing near the high for the day. They still did not close the down-gap made on April 21. All eleven S&P sectors closed higher for the day.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 advanced 2.3% on Wednesday, recouping some of its weekly decline, as sentiment benefited from a reprieve in the oil futures market and more stimulus action. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed with a 2.8% gain, followed by the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+2.0%) and Russell 2000 (+1.3%).

[…]

The advance was steady and broad-based, with all 11 S&P 500 sectors closing in positive territory. The information technology sector (+3.9%) leaped ahead amid strength in the semiconductor stocks, which rallied around a positive earnings report from Texas Instruments (TXN 111.98, +5.14, +4.8%). The consumer staples sector (+1.1%) underperformed.

[…]

U.S. Treasuries finished on a lower note with longer-dated maturities backtracking from their recent advance. The 2-yr yield increased one basis point to 0.21%, and the 10-yr yield increased five basis points to 0.62%. The U.S. Dollar Index increased 0.1% to 100.40.

[…]

• The FHFA Housing Price Index for April rose 0.7% after increasing an upwardly revised 0.5% in March (from +0.3%).
• The weekly MBA Mortgage Applications Index declined 0.3% following a 7.3% increase in the prior week.