Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher
• 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.

From Briefing.com:

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. […] Russell 2000 +14.8% YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average +7.4% YTD S&P 500 +4.2% YTD Nasdaq Composite +1.8% YTD