On Wednesday, just before Steve Liesman of CNBC supposedly launched a ridiculous rally in the S&P 500 index futures, the index was trading at 4145. The ridiculous reaction to Liesman’s question was that the Fed was not considering a 0.75 basis rate hike at its next meeting and instigated a rally to 4303. Interestingly, that was the level of a double top from last week.
Regardless of the volatile price action that has followed, the bottom line is the index ended Thursday’s session right at that level. While the net change for the session is lower by 152.00 at 4143.25, the author of this blog calls it unchanged as of the pre-Leisman question.
Thursday’s price action was an indication that the US economy and or stock market is clearly not out of the woods yet regarding defeating inflation. While the index repelled 200 handles from Wednesday’s high swooning to 4099.25, there is a silver lining to the price action for two different reasons.
First of all, the index rebounded sharply in the last 15 minutes to get right back at the level the index was trading at before the unexpected rally. More importantly, the index did not post a new low close for the year (4145 vs. last Friday’s close of 4127.50).
The biggest gainer of the top components of the index was the smallest loser, Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM), which declined by $1.41 or 1.5 percent to close at $90.31.
That was over two times better than the cash index’s decline of 3.56 percent.
The biggest loser of the top components of the index was Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). For the session, the issue declined by $79.34 or 8.3% to close at $873.28.
