The odds are for an up to sideways day – watch for a break above 3925.00 and a break below 3900.00 for clarity
No key economic data report due during the day:
Directional Bias Before Open:
Weekly: Uptrend
Daily: Uptrend Resumed
120-Min: Side-Down
30-Min: Side-Down
15-Min: Down-Side
6-Min: Down-Side
Key Levels:
Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 3910.86, 3894.30, and 3873.94
Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 3931.75, 3943.37, and 3963.47
Key levels for E-mini futures: break above 3923.50, the high of 4:30 AM and break below 3898.50, the low of 2:00 AM
Pre-Open
On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P futures (June 2021) closed at 3906.00 and the index closed at 3915.46 – a spread of about -9.50 points; futures closed at 3906.00 for the day; the fair value is +0.00
Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 7:45 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +8.00; Dow by +10, and NASDAQ by +74.50
Markets Around The World
Markets in the East closed mostly lower – Mumbai was up
European markets are lower
Currencies (from two weeks ago):
Up
Down
Dollar index
USD/JPY
USD/CHF
EUR/USD
GBP/USD
AUD/USD
NZD/USD
USD/CAD
INR/USD
Commodities (from two weeks ago):
Energy futures are lower
Precious metals are higher
Industrial metals are mostly higher
Most soft commodities are mostly lower
Treasuries (from two weeks ago)
10-years yield closed at 1.730%, up 18.0 basis points from two weeks ago;
30-years is at 2.476%, up 16.7 basis points;
2-years yield is at 0.149%, unchanged;
The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 1.573, up from 1.409
VIX
At 21.32 @ 7:45 AM; down from the last close; above 5-day SMA;
Recent high = 31.90 on March 4; low = 18.95 on March 18
Sentiment: Risk-Neutral-to-Off
The trend and patterns on various time frames for S&P 500:
Monthly
Confirmed Uptrend
December 2020 was a green candle with a small gap and with almost no upper and lower shadows; all-time closing and intraday highs;
Stochastic %K above %D near 100;
RSI-9 above 70; broke above a downtrend line from January 2018
Above the upper band of a 120-month regression channel;
The sequence of higher highs and higher lows is resumed
Weekly:
The week ending on March 12 was a large green candle with small lower and upper shadows at all-time highs
Stochastic (9,1, 3): %K is above %D above 90
RSI (9) is above 65
The week was up +101.40 or +2.6%; the 5-week ATR is 117.80
An up week; third in the last five weeks, and sixth in the last ten weeks
The weekly week pivot point=3907.62, R1=3955.99, R2=4048.64; S1=3854.97, S2=3766.60; R1 pivot level was breached
Above 10-week EMA, 39-week SMA, and 89-week SMA
Uptrend since March 23, 2020
Daily
A red candle near all-time highs with small upper shadow and almost no lower shadow;
Broke above a symmetrical triangle at 3550.00 level on November 9; the 100% extension target near 3900.00 is achieved; 161.8% extension target is near 4140.00 levels
%K is below %D; below 60
RSI-9 near 50; below 8-day EMA
Above 20-day EMA, 50-day EMA, 100-day, and 200-day SMA
Uptrend
2-Hour (E-mini futures)
Declining since 8:00 PM on Wednesday from the all-time high of 3978.50; broke the sequence of upper highs and upper lows since March 4; at a support level around 3900.00
RSI-21 bouncing from below 30 to just above 40
Below EMA20, which is below EMA10 of EMA50
Bias: Side-Down
30-Minute (E-mini futures)
Bouncing off the lows around 3900.00 from a support to a resistance level around 3925.00
RSI-21 just below 50
At/above EMA20 but below EMA10 of EMA50
Bias: Side-Down
15-Minute (E-mini futures)
The Bollinger Band (20, 2.0) is moving sideways since 9:00 PM;
The Bollinger Band is expanding a bit since 2:15 AM with price first getting up to the upper band and then declining to the lower band
Stochastic (9, 1, 3): %K is crisscrossing %D around 30
Bias: Down-Side
Previous Session
Major U.S. indices closed lower on Thursday, March 18 in higher volume. Major indices opened lower but then moved higher till mid-day before giving up the ghost and declining sharply till the close. All but one S&P sectors – Financials – closed lower.
The S&P 500 fell 1.5% on Thursday, as another spike in the 10-yr yield (1.73%) continued to undercut the heavily-weighted growth stocks, whose losses took a toll on risk sentiment. The Nasdaq Composite (-3.0%) and Russell 2000 (-2.9%) dropped around 3.0%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased just 0.5% after setting an all-time high during the day.
[…]
Ten of the 11 S&P 500 sectors closed in negative territory, with the information technology (-2.9%), consumer discretionary (-2.6%), and communication services (-2.0%) sectors as influential laggards. The energy sector (-4.7%) declined the most, though, as oil prices ($60.00/bbl, -$4.61, -7.1%) pulled back 7% alongside other risk assets.
[…]
Initial jobless claims for the week ending March 13 increased by 45,000 to 770,000 (Briefing.com consensus 710,000) while continuing claims for the week ending March 6 decreased by 18,000 to 4.124 million.
[…]
The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased 0.2% m/m in February (Briefing.com consensus 0.3%) following an unrevised 0.5% increase in January. February marked the tenth consecutive monthly increase.
[…]
The Philadelphia Fed Index soared to 51.8 in March (Briefing.com consensus 23.5) from 23.1 in February.
