The S&P 500 futures opened the globex session at 2024.5 down nearly 2 handles, and traded lower into the Chinese GDP release, making an early low near the Tokyo open of 2018.25. After Chinese numbers were mostly mixed, but with GDB meeting expectations year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, worldwide equity markets continued sideways to higher heading into the European open. Early after the Euro open, the index futures made an overnight high of 2028.00, up 10 handles from its early session lows, before coming off late in the globex session into the US cash hours open.
At the regular trading hours open, the S&P futures opened at 2018.25, near the globex lows, and found an early low at 2014.25 before bouncing to test the overnight high of 2026.75. From there, the indexes chopped sideways for much of the mid-day, and after failing to make a new low during early afternoon weakness, the futures rallied into the close on a $1.5 billion market-on-close buy imbalance and closing at 2027.50 up 1.75 handles on the day.
News-worthy remarks came from San Francisco Federal Reserve President Williams, who gave a very muted view concerning rate hike expectations, but did suggest that the US economy is still on a stable path. The Richmond Fed’s Jeffrey Lacker was unable to give his speech today due to illness. Aside from the overnight numbers that came out of China, the economic calendar was as quiet as it comes.
Heading into today is a more noticeable calendar in the U.S. with housing starts and Fed speeches coming from both Janet Yellen and William Dudley. Also will be “turn around Tuesday,” which has been very relevant this year having the tendency to close in the opposite direction of Monday. The ranges are getting noticeably tighter intraday coming back to a norm, and while it seems that buying may be getting to a point of exhaustion, one must keep in mind last October’s rally, which seemingly went straight up with very few 20 handle short opportunities from mid October to early December.
Seen In The IM Pro Trading Room:
Top Notch ( 9:27:14 AM ): – offer es 2021.50
Top Notch ( 9:59:08 AM ): – – filled / stop 2023.00
Top Notch ( 9:59:20 AM ): – first cover 2017.50
Chicagostock ( 10:40:07 AM ): L20
Chicagostock ( 10:46:45 AM ): 2050 bid to add
Chicagostock ( 10:48:18 AM ): moved bid up to 2150
Chicagostock ( 10:49:21 AM ): filled, avg 2075
Chicagostock ( 11:14:29 AM ): scaled 23
Chicagostock ( 11:34:08 AM ): scaled 25 +5
Floor Pivots For Tomorrow’s RTH E-mini
R3 2050.00
R2 2036.50
R1 2032.00
PP 2023.00
S1 2018.50
S2 2009.50
S3 1996.00
Tomorrow’s Notable Earnings: Bank Of New York Mellon Corp (N:BK) Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (N:CMG) Harley-Davidson Inc (N:HOG) Intuitive Surgical Inc (O:ISRG) Lockheed Martin Corp (N:LMT) Verizon Communications Inc (N:VZ)