Wednesday’s session held more of a mixed bag of earnings reports for components in the S&P 500 index, which paved the way for a rollercoaster of a day.
After gaining steadily during the overnight session, partially thanks to several positive earnings reports after hours, the index futures started to decline in the early morning hours. The bulls were able to keep the index futures above unchanged during the premarket session, making for a positive open of the regular session.
Once the bulls failed to gain any ground during the post-open chop, sellers started to take hold. The index futures started to test support at unchanged, also coinciding with the premarket low, and once breached the pace of the selloff increased. Support wasn’t found until the daily pivot, around the 5086 area. A bid was soon caught, and a V-shaped recovery started to take shape. The bulls were able to take the index futures back up into the green, but they were unable to hold onto the gains. For the remainder of the afternoon, the bulls and bears battled it out above and below Tuesday’s closing level, but neither were able to gain much ground.
The regular session concluded just above unchanged at 5107.50, notching a one handle gain. As several disappointing earnings reports were released post-close, the index futures started to decline in after hours trading, lower by over 25 handles as of writing this article.
The wild week is also expected to continue, as possibly the most anticipated group of earnings reports are scheduled for release after Thursday’s close, that being Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL).
For Wednesday’s session, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the biggest gainer among top components of the index. The computer colossus was able to advance by $2.12 or 1.27% to close at $169.02 for the day.
That performance was over one percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.05%.
The biggest loser was NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), giving up its gains from the previous day. For Wednesday’s session, the chipmaker declined by $27.46 or 3.33% to close at $796.77. It’s worth noting Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META) released its latest earnings report after today’s close, and was leading the way down in after hours trading by over 15% as of writing.
