Directional Bias For The Day:

• The futures are higher
• Moving sideways to down since 8:00 PM, Asian session, on March 23 – between 2349.50 and the 2340.75 – like that on Thursday;
• Moving higher since 6:30 AM low of 2340.75
• Daily trend is down; 30-minute chart trend is sideways;
• Odds are for a sideways to down day; watch for break above 2349.50 and below 2340.75 for change of fortunes
• Volatility will be elevated during the day and will be influenced by political events

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mostly higher – Seoul closed down
• European markets are lower
• Dollar index and GBP/USD are lower; USD/JPY and EUR/USD are higher;
• Commodities are mixed – crude oil and silver are up; gold, NatGas and copper are down
• 10-yrs yield is at 2.414% down from March 23 close of 2.418%; 30-years is at 3.024% down from 3.026%

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 2340.51, 2336.45 and 2322.17
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 2355.19, 2358.92 and 2366.30
• Key levels for eMini futures: break above 2349.50, high of 8:00 PM on March 23 and break below 2338.25, the low of 3:30 PM on March 23

Pre-Open

• Pre-NYSE session open, futures price action is to the upside – at 9:00 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +4.00, Dow by +45.00 and NASDAQ by +14.50
• On Thursday, at 4:00 PM, S&P future (June contract) closed at 2342.50 and the index closed at 2345.96 – a spread of about +3.50 points; futures closed at 2340.00 for the day; the fair value is +2.50

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

Monthly	Confirmed Uptrend Uptrend resumption since Feb 08, 2016 after a pull back of -15.2%
Weekly:	Candlestick for the last week, Friday March 17, was a  green bullish engulfing, over a small red doji candle – small body, and relatively larger upper and lower shadows Did not breach earlier high An up week – seventh out of last ten weeks Broke above a down-sloping flag on November 14, 2016; first target of 2285.92 and second target of 2363.14 are achieved Last swing low, 2083.79, was the low on November 4, 2016 Above 39-week SMA and 89-week SMA
Daily	March 23 was a small red body with a larger upper shadow; March 22 was a small green body with a larger lower shadow; a break either above the high of March 23, 2358.92, or below the low of March 22, 2336.45, will be critical Broke below a descending triangle with target near 2308.00; Broke a sequence of higher highs and higher lows; broke below an uptrend line since November lows Streak of intraday range being less than 1.00% since December 29 is broken Breaking out from an up-sloping channel that is in effect since December 27 Above 100-day, 200-day and 50-day SMA/EMA but below 20-day EMA Last swing low 2263.62
2-Hour (e-mini future)	Bounced off near February 15 low of 2331.25 and faced resistance at 2354.75, the previous support level; Uptrend is under pressure Below falling 20-bar EMA and 50-bar EMA
30-Minute (e-mini future)	Bounced off support after a sharp decline; retraced from the resistance near 2356.00 Fell back in the horizontal channel with high near 2349.50 and low near 2332.25 Down trend since 3:30 AM on March 16; lower lows and lower highs; Below flattening 50-bar EMA and 20-bar EMA

Previous Session

U.S. indices closed mostly down on Thursday March 23. Russell 2000 was the only one to rise.

S&P 500 was up for most of the day before declining in the last hour. It ended the day with -0.1% loss.