For the first time since mid-February, the S&P 500 index was lower for the fifth day in a row. Friday’s decline is even more concerning since the index was in the green off the open by over 20 handles, before it swooned fast and hard.
A variety of factors contributed to the decline, with one of the primary ones being trepidation over the anniversary of 9-11 taking place on Saturday. The other major factor was the index’s top component getting routed off an unfavorable court ruling that the company must ease App Store rules.
Not only was the technical damage inflicted on a daily basis, but on a weekly time frame as well. The index breached last week’s low (4500.75) during the first three sessions of the week but was able to recover. Whereas the index breached that level on Friday by a wide margin of 45 handles and settled well under it.
While the next weekly low from the last week of August comes in at 4433.75, the weekly support tails off down to the weekly low of July 23rd at 4224.
As mentioned above, the index’s top component inflicted the most damage. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) had its worst day since mid-July declining $5.1 or 3.3% to close at $148.97.
That is over four times the index’s decline of 0.77%.
The lone bright spot in the index was Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), which was slightly higher by $0.89 to close at $378.79.
