Directional Bias For The Day:

• S&P Futures are higher at 9:00 AM. Futures have been forming a downsloping flag since 5:00 AM.
• The odds are for an up day with elevated volatility – watch for a break above 4162.50 and a break below 4153.50 for clarity
• The major economic data reports due during the day:
  • Import Prices ( 0.4% vs. 0.3% est.; prev. -0.8% ) at 8:30 AM
  • Prelim UoM Consumer Sentiment ( 63.0 est.; prev. 63.5) at 10:00 AM
  • Prelim UoM Inflation Expectations ( 4.6% ) at 10:00 AM

Directional Bias Before Open:

Weekly: Uptrend Resumed Daily: Uptrend Under Pressure 120-Min: Side

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

Key Levels:

• Critical support levels for S&P 500 are 4132.80, 4123.90, and 4112.02
• Critical resistance levels for S&P 500 are 4147.32, 4154.28, and 4164.10
• The key levels for E-mini futures are 4162.50, the high at 6:45 AM, and 4153.50, the low at 8:15 AM

Pre-Open

• On Thursday at 4:00 PM, S&P futures (June 2023) closed at 4144.00, and the index closed at 4130.62 – a spread of about +13.50 points; the futures closed at 4143.75; the fair value is +0.25
• Pre-NYSE session open, futures were higher – at 9:00 AM, S&P 500 futures were up by +12.75, Dow by +111, and NASDAQ by +24.50

Markets Around The World

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

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

• Commodities (Compared to two weeks ago):
  • Energy futures are lower
  • Precious metals are mixed
  • Industrial metals are mostly higher
  • Soft commodities are mostly lower
• Treasuries (Compared to two weeks ago)
  • The 10-year yield closed at 3.412, down -11.6 basis points from two weeks ago;
  • The 30-year is at 3.755%, down 0.2 basis points;
  • The 2-year yield is at 3.916%, down -15.6 basis points;
  • The 10-Year-&-2-Year spread is at -0.506, up from -0.544
  • The 30-Year-&-10-Year spread is at 0.344, up from +0.228
• VIX
  • At 16.73 @ 8:15 AM; down from the last close; below the 5-day SMA;
  • Recent high = 21.23 on May 4; low = 15.53 on May 1
  • Sentiment: Risk-On

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

Weekly:	The week ending on May 5 as a small red candle with almost a long lower shadow and a small upper shadow, breaking above the upper bound of a symmetrical triangle Stochastic (9,1, 3): %K is below the %D; RSI-9 is just below 60 The week was down -33.23 or -0.8%; the 5-week ATR  is 93.78 A down week, third in the last five weeks, and fourth in the previous ten weeks; The weekly pivot point=4123.82, R1=4199.35, R2=4262.46; S1=4060.71, S2=3985.18; S1 pivot level was breached Above 10-week EMA and 39-week SMA; below 89-week SMA Uptrend
Daily	Another small Doji; the past four days’ candles are small Doji patterns, mostly within the relatively large green real body of Friday’s candle. Stochastic (9, 1, 3): %K is above the %D; RSI-9 turned up to above 50; above 8-DMA Above 20-day EMA, 50-day EMA, 100-day SMA, and 200-day SMA; Uptrend Under Pressure
2-Hour (E-mini futures)	Moving sideways to up in the upper half of a Horizontal Channel between 4205.00 and 4060.00 that has been forming since March 30 RSI-21 has risen to above 60 from around 30 on Thursday Above EMA20, which is above EMA10 of EMA50 Bias:  Side
30-Minute (E-mini futures)	Moving up since 10:00 AM on Thursday – up more than 40 points RSI-21 has declined to just above 50 from just above 60 At/above EMA 20, which is above EMA10 of EMA50 Bias: Side-Up
15-Minute (E-mini futures)	The Bollinger Band (20, 2.0) has been moving up since 2:30 PM on Thursday. The Bollinger Band has been contracting since 8:00 AM Bias: Up

Previous Session

Major U.S. indices closed mostly lower on Thursday, May 11, in mostly lower volume. NASDAQ Composite closed higher. Dow Jones Industrial Average traded in higher volume.

The major indices opened down, and most made the day’s lows in the first hour of trading. The indices drifted higher to sideways most of the day.

From Briefing.com:

[…] The major indices closed in mixed fashion near their highs of the day, [….] The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP), though, fell 0.5% today. Decliners led advancers by a greater than 2-to-1 margin at the NYSE and a slightly less than 2-to-1 margin at the Nasdaq. […] Most of the S&P 500 sectors closed with losses while the communication services (+1.7%) and consumer discretionary (+0.6%) sectors led the outperformers thanks to gains in their respective mega cap components. […] The 2-yr note yield traded as low as 3.80% following the data, but settled the day unchanged at 3.90%. The 10-yr note yield, at 3.34% shortly after the data, fell four basis points to 3.40%. […] Nasdaq Composite: +17.8% YTD S&P 500: +7.6% YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.5% YTD S&P Midcap 400: +0.1% YTD Russell 2000: -0.9% YTD […] April PPI 0.2% (Briefing.com consensus 0.3%); Prior was revised to -0.4% from -0.5%; April Core PPI 0.2% (Briefing.com consensus 0.3%); Prior was revised to 0.0% from -0.1% [….] Weekly Initial Claims 264K (Briefing.com consensus 247K); Prior 242K; Weekly Continuing Claims 1.813 mln; Prior was revised to 1.801 mln from 1.805 mln […] Overseas: Europe: DAX -0.4%, FTSE -0.1%, CAC +0.3% Asia: Nikkei +0.0%, Hang Seng -0.1%, Shanghai -0.3% Commodities:  Crude Oil -1.84 @ 70.95 Nat Gas +0.01 @ 2.34 Gold -17.30 @ 2019.80 Silver -1.28 @ 24.39 Copper -0.14 @ 3.70