Stock traders are likely to remain noiseless today as the biggest stock market, the US, is closed today due to a public holiday. Traders in Europe are likely to remain focus on the aftermath of the US NFP data, which disappointed the markets and triggered a significant sell-off.

Traders will also be focusing on some of the major events taking place this week, such as the European Central Bank’s meeting.

So far, there has been plenty of noise that the ECB may indicate that time has come that it should start thinking of scaling down its asset purchase programme. With that in mind, the most significant price action is going to be for the Euro. If the ECB sends a hawkish signal, we are likely to see more strength for the Euro, which is already showing strength against the dollar index. However, if the ECB utilises only jawboning and does nothing about its actual action, we could see some sell-off for the Euro. 

Asian Markets 

The Asian stock market traded mostly higher on the first trading day of the week. The Nikkei index advanced 1.84%. The HSI index increased by 0.51%, while the Shanghai index gained 1.02%. The ASX index dropped by 0.10%.

Dow Jones and S&P 500: Market Breadth

The Dow Jones‘s market breadth lost further momentum on Friday. 71% of the Dow Jones stocks traded above their 200-day moving average. 

The S&P 500 stock breadth also displayed weakness on Friday.75% of the shares traded above their 200-day moving average. 

Dow Jones Futures Today

The Dow Jones futures are trading lower today. In terms of economic data, investors will be looking at the FOMC member William’s speech. He will be speaking tomorrow and traders will gauge his thoughts on the Fed’s monetary policy closely. In addition to this, we also have the JOLTS Job Opening number. The forecast for this data is 10.05M while the previous number was 10.07 number. 

The Dow Jones futures are likely to remain lifeless today as the US stock market is closed for a public holiday today. In terms of the Dow Jones’s price action, there is no doubt that the Dow’s price action has been consolidating for the last number of days which means traders are lost for the direction. Having said that, the price is still maintaining its upward trend and this is because the Dow’s price is trading above the 50, 100 and 200-day SMA on the daily time frame. As for the RSI, it is maintaining its trend of lower highs on the daily time frame, which means that bulls are losing ground.

The near term support is at 34,737, while the resistance is at 35,633.    

Stock Market Rally

The S&P 500 stock index closed lower on Friday; the index declined by 0.03%. The travel sector led the index lower and 6 out of 11 sectors closed lower. 

The Dow index declined on the final trading day of the last week; the Dow stocks moved the index lower by 0.21%. 25 shares declined, while 5 shares closed higher. 

The NASDAQ composite, a tech-savvy index, closed higher by 0.21% yesterday.

S&P 500 Leaders and Laggards: ViacomCBS and Monolithic

Moderna Inc stock contributed the biggest gain, soaring 4.788%. Carnival Corp stock was the largest drag; it fell by 4.413%. The S&P 500 stock index is up 1.74% so far this year.

Dow Jones Leaders and Laggards: Disney and Apple  

Salesforce provided the biggest help for the Dow Jones; it advanced by 1.109%, while American Express was the largest decliner, it fell by 1.69%.