While the bears had the upper hand in premarket trading, the bulls fought back around 10:00 AM ET when the issue failed to breach the premarket low. The rally was aided by comments from the Fed’s Waller that he was ‘increasingly confident’ policy is well positioned to slow the economy and get inflation back to 2%.
However, the bears were persistent and got aggressive when the index failed to make a new high for the move heading into lunchtime. A lukewarm response to the 1:00 PM ET bond auction, which lacked foreign demand, weighed on the index.
The final hour was choppy and leaning to closing in the red, but when it failed to make a new low in the final thirty minutes, buyers resurfaced. A lopsided buy imbalance of $3.4B for the close instigated another round of buying that persisted into the final minutes.
As a result, the index added two handles at the closing price of 4563. That marks the fourth consecutive close in just over a seven handle range (4561-4568.25).
Among the top components, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) was the biggest winner. For the second day in a row, it made a new all-time high and all-time closing high by adding $4.02 or 1.06% at the closing price of $382.63.
This performance was just under one percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.10%.
NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) reversed its role from Monday and was the biggest loser. The issue is still under selling pressure following its Q3 beat and upbeat guidance. After ending a three-day losing streak on Monday, the issue was back in the red by $4.25 or 0.88% at the closing price of $478.17.
