Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are little changed at 8:45 AM; moving sideways to down since 4:00 PM on Tuesday
• The odds are for a sideways to a down day – watch for a break below 4515.50 for a change of sentiments
• Key economic data report due during the day:
  • Beige Book at 2:00 PM
  • Federal Budget ( -61.0B est.; prev. 170.6B)

Directional Bias Before Open:

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 4509.84, 4496.41, and 4488.29
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 4529.90, 4541.45, and 4545.85
• Key levels for E-mini futures: break above 4515.50, the high of 3:30 AM  and break below 4504.25, the low of 2:15 AM

Pre-Open

• On Tuesday at 4:00 PM, S&P futures (December 2021) closed at 4511.75 and the index closed at 4519.63 – a spread of about -8.00 points; futures closed at 4511.25 for the day; the fair value is -0.50
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures are a bit lower – at 7:45 AM, S&P 500 futures were down by -3.50; Dow by -25; and NASDAQ by -4.25

Markets Around The World

• Markets in the East closed mixed – Shanghai, Mumbai, Seoul, and Singapore closed lower; Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Sydney closed higher
• European markets are mostly higher – Spain is lower
• Currencies (Compared to two weeks ago):
  

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

• Commodities (Compared to two weeks ago):
  • Energy futures are mixed
  • Precious metals are higher
  • Industrial metals higher
  • Soft commodities are mostly lower
• Treasuries (Compared to two weeks ago)
  • 10-years yield closed at 1.635%, up +10.6 basis points from two weeks ago;
  • 30-years is at 2.088%, down -1.0 basis points;
  • 2-years yield is at 0.396%, up +11.0 basis points;
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at 1.239, down from 1.243
• VIX
  • At 15.66 @ 7:30 AM; down from the last close; below 5-day SMA;
  • Recent high = 24.89 on October 1; low =  17.63 on September 24
  • Sentiment: Risk-Neutral-Off

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

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed higher on Tuesday, October 19, in mostly lower volume. Dow Jones Transportation Average traded in higher volume. Major indices opened higher and rose for the first half before drifting sideways for rest of the day with an up bias. 

From Briefing.com:

The S&P 500 (+0.7%) and Nasdaq Composite (+0.7%) both advanced 0.7% on Tuesday and extended their winning streaks to five sessions. […] The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 0.6%, and the Russell 2000 increased 0.4%. […] P&G’s warning pressured shares of the company and fed into the inflation concerns that have been driving oil prices ($83.01/bbl, +0.57, +0.7%) and long-term interest rates higher. The 10-yr yield rose five basis points to 1.64%, while the 2-yr yield fell three basis points to 0.39%. […] Ten of the 11 S&P 500 sectors closed higher, led by utilities (+1.3%), health care (+1.3%), and energy (+1.2%) with gains over 1.0%. […] Housing starts declined 1.6% month-over-month in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.555 million units (Briefing.com consensus 1.620 million), but were up 7.4% year-over-year. Building permits were down 7.7% month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.589 million (Briefing.com consensus 1.670 million) and were flat year-over-year. […] S&P 500 +20.3% YTD Nasdaq Composite +17.4% YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average +15.9% YTD Russell 2000 +15.2% YTD Overseas:  Europe: DAX +0.3%, FTSE +0.2%, CAC -0.1% Asia: Nikkei +0.7%, Hang Seng +1.5%, Shanghai +0.7% Commodities:  Crude Oil +0.57 @ 82.27 Nat Gas +0.07 @ 5.09 Gold +2.80 @ 1770.00 Silver +0.52 @ 23.80 Copper -0.01 @ 4.70