Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are lower;
• The odds are for a sideways to down day with elevated volatility – watch for a break above 3345.50 and below 3323.25 for clarity
• Key economic data due:
  • Non-Farm Employment Change ( 1763K vs. 1530K est.; prev. 4791K) at 8:30 AM
  • Unemployment Rate ( 0.2% vs. 10.5% est.; prev. 11.1% ) at 8:30 AM
  • Average Hourly Earnings ( 0.2% vs. -0.5% est. ; prev. -1.3%) at 8:30 AM
  • Final Wholesale Inventories ( -2.0% est.; prev. -2.0% ) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 3332.91, 3318.14 and 3301.52
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 3351.03, 3360.76, and 3375.05
• Key levels for E-mini futures: break above 3345.50, the high of 8:30 AM and break below 3323.25, the low of 5:15 AM

Pre-Open

• On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P futures (September 2020) closed at 3342.50 and the index closed at 3349.16 – a spread of about -6.75 points; futures closed at 3344.25 for the day; the fair value is -1.75
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are lower – at 8:45 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -11.25; Dow by -55 and NASDAQ by -43.00

Markets Around The World

• Markets in East closed mostly lower – Mumbai and Seoul were up;
• European markets are mixed – Germany, U.K., Switzerland, and STOXX 600 are higher; France, Spain, and Italy are lower
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bond
  • 10-yrs yield is  at 0.543%, up from August 6 close of 0.536%;
  • 30-years is at 1.207% up from 1.201%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.117% down from 0.121%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.426 up from 0.415
• VIX
  • Is at 23.64; up +0.99 from August 6 close; at/below 5-day SMA;
  • Recent high 33.67 on July 14; low 20.97 on August 6
  • Sentiment: Risk-Neutral

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mostly higher on Thursday, August 6 in mixed volume. Russell 2000 and NYSE Composite closed lower. Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 traded in lower volume.

From Briefing.com:

The mega-cap stocks did the heavy lifting on Thursday, powering the Nasdaq Composite (+1.0%) to another record close and leaving the S&P 500 (+0.6%) within 1.5% of its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7%, while the small-cap Russell 2000 declined 0.1%. […] Unsurprisingly, the S&P 500 communication services (+2.5%), information technology (+1.5%), and consumer discretionary (+0.5%) sectors advanced the most today. On the other end were the energy (-0.7%), health care (-0.6%), materials (-0.4%), and financials (-0.2%) sectors in negative territory. […] Outside equities, U.S. Treasuries finished little changed, oil prices ($41.95/bbl, -0.29, -0.7%) closed lower, and precious metals continued to rally. The 2-yr yield was flat at 0.11%, and the 10-yr yield declined one basis point to 0.54%. The U.S. Dollar Index declined 0.1% to 92.77. Gold futures rose 0.9% to $2068.80/ozt, and silver futures rose 5.5% to $28.37/ozt. […] Initial claims for the week ending August 1 decreased by 249,000 to 1.186 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.400 million). Continuing claims for the week ending July 25 decreased by 844,000 to 16.107 million. The key takeaway from the report is that initial claims were much better than expected, which is eye candy to a stock market moving up on relative terms. The big picture takeaway, however, is that initial claims are still running in excess of 1.1 million. That’s not a good thing, as it underscores the continued perilous state of the labor market. In the same week a year ago, initial claims were 214,000. […] Nasdaq Composite +23.8% YTD S&P 500 +3.7% YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average -4.0% YTD Russell 2000 -7.4% YTD ..NYSE Adv/Dec 1458/1479. ..NASDAQ Adv/Dec 1492/1765.