U.S. durable goods orders for April are set for release at 7:30 a.m. CDT Friday, followed by the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index for May at 9 a.m. USDA's monthly cold storage and cattle on-feed reports will be out at 2 p.m. Dow Jones survey expects USDA to find 11.5 million head of cattle on feed as of May 1, down 0.9% from a year ago.
Weather
A front continues to be active from the Southern Plains through the Mid-Atlantic on Friday and will produce some pockets of showers and thunderstorms, some of which may be severe. But the bigger threat is a system moving through the Northern Plains into Ontario for the day. It has already produced a significant batch of severe thunderstorms overnight, now getting into Iowa. The front to the system will either continue this line of storms or form a new one later in the day centered on Illinois that could also produce severe storms. And has been the case all week, heavy rain will also be a possibility.