Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher;
• The odds are for an up to sideways day; the daily bias is down-to-sideways elevated volatility – watch for a break below 3451.75 and below 3437.0 for change of fortune
• Key economic data report:
  • Flash Manufacturing PMI ( 53.4 est.; prev.53.2) at 9:45 AM
  • Flash Services PMI ( 54.7 est.; prev.54.6) at 9:45 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Weekly: Uptrend Daily: Uptrend Under Pressure

120-Min: Down 30-Min: Down-Side 15-Min: Side-Up 6-Min: Side

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 3429.39, 3415.34 and 3396.39
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 3464.86, 3476.93, and 3491.69
• Key levels for E-mini futures: break above 3469.75, the high of 1:30 PM on October 20 and break below 3451.75, the low of 5:00 AM

Pre-Open

• On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P futures (December 2020) closed at 3447.50 and the index closed at 3453.49 – a spread of about -6.00 points; futures closed at 3449.25 for the day; the fair value is -1.75
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are higher – at 8:15 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +11.75; Dow by +98, and NASDAQ by +30.50

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mostly higher – Shangai and Sydney were down
• European markets are higher;
• Currencies:
  

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

• Commodities:
  

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

• Bond
  • 10-years yield closed at 0.848%, up from October 21 close of 0.816%;
  • 30-years is at 1.658% up from 1.629%
  • 2-years yield is at 0.178% up from 0.153%
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 0.670 up from 0.663
• VIX
  • Is at 27.75; down -0.36 from October 22 close; below 5-day SMA;
  • Recent high =  38.28 on September 4; low =  24.03 on October 9
  • Sentiment: Risk-Neutral to Off

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

Monthly	Uptrend September 2020 was a red candle with long upper and lower shadows; made an all-time high Stochastic %K crossing below %D from above 90; potential %D Bearish Divergence RSI-9 turning down from near 70; falling below a downtrend line that it broke above in August Retreating from the upper band of a 120-month regression channel; The sequence of higher highs and higher lows is resumed
Weekly:	The week ending on October 16 was a red spinning top candle with large upper and lower shadows but small real body indicating indecision Stochastic (9,1, 3): %K turning flat-to-down above %D; RSI (9) turning flat-to-down near 66 The week was up + 6.68 or +0.2%; the 5-week ATR is 118.40 The weekly week pivot point=3491.52, R1=3542.14, R2=3600.48; S1=3433.18, S2=3382.56; R1 pivot level was breached An up week; third in a row and in the last five weeks and sixth in last ten weeks Above 10-week EMA, 39-week SMA, and 89-week SMA Uptrend since March 23
Daily	A relatively small green spinning top candle; declining since October 12 in small steps %K crossing above %D; from below 20 RSI-9 bouncing above 50; below 8-day SMA At/above 20-day EMA; above 50-day EMA, 100-day, and 200-day SMA Uptrend Under Pressure
2-Hour (E-mini futures)	Rising since 8:00 PM on Wednesday from the lower bound of a down-sloping flag that is forming since October 12; near the upper bound of the flag RSI-21 bouncing off 40 to near 50; moving between 40 and 50 since Tuesday midnight Above EMA20, which is at/below EMA10 of EMA50 Bias: Down
30-Minute (E-mini futures)	Trending down since 2:00 PM on October 12 within a down-sloping flag RSI-21 moving higher to near 60 %K is crisscrossing %D lower around 80 Above EMA20, which is above EMA10 of EMA50 Bias: Down-Side
15-Minute (E-mini futures)	Bollinger Band (20, 2.0) sloping up since 12:15 AM on Thursday within a larger downtrend The Bollinger Band is relatively stable Stochastic (9, 1, 3): %K is crisscrossing %D Bias: Side-Up

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed higher on Thursday, October 22 in mostly higher volume. S&P 500 traded in lower volume. Four S&P sectors – Consumer Staples, Technology, Real Estate, and Telecom – closed lower. The U.S. indices made small spinning top candles.

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 gained 0.5% on Thursday, […] the Russell 2000 outperformed (+1.7%) by a healthy margin, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.5%) performed in-line, and the Nasdaq Composite (+0.2%) underperformed. […] led by the cyclically-oriented energy (+4.2%) and financials (+1.9%) sectors. The health care (+1.5%) and utilities (+1.5%) sectors followed suit, but losses in the information technology (-0.5%), real estate (-0.8%), and consumer staples (-0.2%) sectors limited the rebound effort. […] The 10-yr yield finished the session higher by three basis points to 0.85%. The 2-yr yield remained unchanged at 0.15% due to the Fed’s stance of keeping the fed funds rate near zero for the next few years. The U.S. Dollar Index advanced 0.4% to 92.95. WTI crude futures rose 1.6%, or $0.62, to $40.65/bbl. […] Initial claims for the week ending October 17 decreased by 55,000 to 787,000 (Briefing.com consensus 860,000) while continuing claims for the week ending October 10 decreased by 1.024 million to 8.373 million […] Existing home sales increased 9.4% m/m in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.54 million (Briefing.com consensus 6.10 million), bolstered in part by a 34% annual increase in sales in vacation destination counties. […] The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index increased 0.7% m/m in September (Briefing.com consensus +0.6%) following an upwardly revised 1.4% increase (from 1.2%) in August. […] Nasdaq Composite +28.2% YTD S&P 500 +6.9% YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average -0.6% YTD Russell 2000 -2.3% YTD