Market Remarks

Market Diary – Friday Aug 19, 2016

Directional Bias For The Day:

  • The futures are lower but above the lows reached at 4:30 AM
  • Odds are high for a sideways or a down day – break above 2185.00 will increase the odds for an up day whereas a break below 2176.00 will increase the odds for a down day;
  • On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P future closed at 2184.25 and the index closed at 2187.02
  • Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2180.49, 2172.39, and 2168.50
  • Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2186.80, 2189.97 and 2195.78
  • Pre-NYSE session open, futures price action is to the mixed; at 8:45 AM, S&P 500 future was up by +0.25, Dow was down by -9 and NASDAQ was up by +5.00

The trend and patterns on various time frames are:

Weekly
  • Up trend since Feb 08, 2016 with one pullback; broke out of a 2-year trading range in July, 2016
Daily
  • Uptrend since June 28th with one pullback;
  • made a hammer on Wednesday; 3-day bullish candlestick pattern
2-Hour (e-mini future)
  • Range bound between a low of 2167.75 and a high of 2190.75;
  • bounced off the low on Wednesday and now in the middle of the range;
  • Turning back from the resistance of 2185.00 – Aug 16th high at 4:00 PM
30-Minute (e-mini future)
  • In a range bounded by high of 2184.50 reached at 3:30 PM on August 18th and the low of 2176.25;
  • bouncing off the lower limit

Before NYSE Session Open

Major US indices traded in a narrow range on Thursday. At NYSE open, futures were slightly above previous close. S&P 500 started the day with a rally to 2186.28 by 11:00 AM, then it declined to 2180.49 by 12:30 PM before closing the day at the high of 2186.79. Other major indices had similar price-action, however, they all are below the gap down open of August 16th. The lower limit of the gap is acting as resistance.

The three-day candlestick pattern shows short bullishness but overcoming the gap resistance is critical.

  • S&P 500 gained +4.80 or +0.2% to close at 2187.02;
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by +23.76 or +0.1% to 18597.70;
  • NASDAQ Composite gained +11.49 or +0.2% to close at 5240.15;
  • Russell 2000 was up by +9.17 or +0.7% to 1236.85;.

Asian Session

Asian bourses were mixed on Friday.

  • Shanghai Composite was up by +3.99 or +0.13% to close at 3108.10;
  • Hang Seng closed down by -85.84 or -0.37% to 22937.22;
  • Nikkei 225 closed up by +59.81 or +0.36% to 16545.82;
  • Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 was up by +18.9 or +0.34% to 5526.70;
  • Sensex was down by -46.44 or -0.17% to close at 28077.00;
  • South Korea’s KOSPI was up +0.77 or +0.04% to close at 2056.24;

European Session

In pre-US session, the European stock markets are mostly down at 8:00 AM and are near the lows for the day.

  • DAX is down by -70.15 or -0.66% at 10532.88; Thursday was a doji-harami within a large red-candle of Wednesday; Friday’s low has already broken Thursday’s low;
  • FTSE-100 is down by -17.12 or -0.26% to 6851.84; it is retracing from 2016 high reached on August 15th;
  • CAC-40 is down by -46.15 or -1.04% to 4390.91;
  • Spanish IBEX is down by -127.30 or -1.49%  to 8422.80;
  • Italian FTSE MIB is down by -444.95 or -2.54% to 16250.63;
  • Swiss SMI-SWX is down by -54.98 or -0.67% to 8134.75;
  • STOXX-600 is down by -2.87 or -0.84% to 340.04

Currencies

  • U.S. Dollar index is up by +0.358 to 94.495; it is trying to regain the uptrend line, which is in progress on daily timeframe since May 3rd;
  • EUR/USD is down by -24.1 pips to 1.13278; on August 16th, it broke above a short-tern down trend line since May 3rd and the next resistance is 1.14242;
  • GBP/USD is down by -72.0 pips to 1.3089; it is turned back from the resistance of 1.3175;
  • USD/JPY is up by +35.3 pips (Yen is weaker) to 100.274; it is struggling at the support – a congestion area that lasted for more than six months in 2013

Commodities

Up Down Last Notes
WTI Crude  -0.19 or -0.37%  48.04 Since August 3rd, it has only two down days; it has just cleared a resistance and broken above a down trend line since June 9th; the next resistance is at 48.25;
Natural Gas   -0.065 or -2.39%  2.610
Gold  -14.4 or -1.09%  1342.80
Silver  -0.445 or -2.25% 19.296
Copper  -0.0025 or -0.12% 2.1650

Yields

  • U.S. Treasury yields are up for the day so far
  • 30-year yield is up by +2.6 basis points to 2.285% and 10-year is up by +2.9 basis points to 1.565%

Pivot Levels:

S&P 500 is above its 10-D EMA, 10-D EMA is above 20-D EMA and its 20-D EMA is trending above 50-D EMA since March 9, 2016.

S&P 500 Cash eMini Futures
 Daily Level Break
Chance
Level Break
Chance
Pivot 2184.84 2181.42
R1 2189.21 60% 2186.58 56%
R2 2191.41 43% 2189.67 32%
R3 2195.78 47% 2194.83 27%
S1 2182.64 36% 2178.33 35%
S2 2178.27 34% 2173.17 26%
S3 2176.07 21% 2170.08 20%

Note: The probability of a level breaking is shown above is for the current condition when the price is above 20-D EMA, 10-D EMA is above 20-D EMA and 20-D EMA is above 50-D EMA. R2 break probability comes in picture only when R1 is broken. So are the probabilities calculated for R3, S2 and S3

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