Yesterday the S&P 500 futures had a pre-jobs Friday bounce. Right after the futures opened at 8:30 Central time they began moving higher. While many other periodicals may include yesterday’s economic readings, I don’t believe that that’s what you’re here for. The bottom line in yesterday’s trade was that the futures were oversold and short-covered in front of today’s jobs number.
At the end of yesterday’s session the S&P futures closed 6.4 points higher while the Dow futures closed 61 points higher and the NASDAQ futures closed down 5.75 points. Volume was very low across the board. Total volume including Globex in the S&P futures was only 1 million contracts. We suspected volumes would be low as more traders would leave early to make for a longer holiday weekend.
There was a bit of confusion on the 2:45 cash imbalance where MrTopStep was given -$300mil to sell on the close vs. the actual that came out +$300mil to buy. After reviewing several sources data the actual MOC came out Buy 1bil vs. Sell $700mil. That said, the futures did rally and sell off a bit going into the close.
On today’s eco calendar: Jobs Friday, CME early close, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota opening remarks at St. Louis Fed community development conference in Washington and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard remarks at the same conference.
Our view: There have been some very bad days for the S&P 500 on Good Fridays when the exchanges are closed. I am not sure why they do this, but whatever the reason it should stop. Why would the government release one of its most key economic releases when all the exchanges are closed in observance of Good Friday and Passover? Someone should explain because if they did maybe they would change it. That said, the S&P was mostly trending higher throughout last night’s Globex session and started pulling back just before 7 o’clock Central time. Like the markets? Don’t like the markets? Well, I think it’s important to remember that I have not been calling out higher prices. Right now the S&P is stuck 10 or 20 points the other side of S&P 2050. My concern today is that traders may sell a good jobs number or a bad jobs number.
I am going to leave it like that. I want to wish all of you both in the United States and throughout the world a very Merry Easter and Passover holiday. Remember the CME closes early today and Europe is closed on Monday.
As always, please use protective buy and sell stops when trading futures and options.
- In Europe 10 of 12 markets are trading higher : DAX -0.28%, FTSE +0.35%, MICEX +0.44%, Athens GD.AT -0.53% (at 5:00 am CT)
- Fair value: S&P -7.86. , Nasdaq -8.34, Dow -88.78
- Total volume: LOW 1mil ESM and 2.1k SPH traded
- Economic schedule: March jobs report and Narayana Kocherlakota and James Bullard speak.
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