Coming into Friday’s session, the S&P 500 index futures seemed poised to finish the day and week on the highs. By the end of the premarket session, the bulls had the index futures trading higher by over 16 handles or 0.3%.
Bears and profit-takers were ready to sell the overnight gap, as initial selling took the index futures a few handles lower. The bulls weren’t done, however, as they bought the opening dip and started testing the premarket high. After breaching that level and peaking at 5264, profit-takers and bears took advantage of the gains and started adding some selling pressure. At 10am EDT, May’s preliminary consumer sentiment reading came in well below expectations (67.4 vs. 76.0 exp.), making a new six-month low in the economic index.
Bears took the consumer sentiment reading and ran with it, quickly erasing the intraday gains and continuing the selling pressure all the way down to unchanged in the index futures. Support was finally found just before the lunch hour in the 5233 area, a level that also came into play during Thursday’s intraday session. After defending that level, the bulls and bears battled it out around unchanged for most of the afternoon. Though the day was also filled with fedspeak, the mix of hawkish and dovish takes didn’t seem to add as much impact to the market action compared to the consumer sentiment data.
In the final hour, the bulls were finally able to hold the index in the green, even trying for a rally once closing imbalances were in at 3:50pm EDT. Unfortunately for the bulls, the last five minutes of the regular session saw an immediate reversal of the last-minute rally.
Friday’s session added a paltry 7.25 handles to conclude at 5246.25, just below mid-range on the day. For the week, that still makes for a healthy gain of 91.5 handles or 1.78%.
Among the top components of the index, Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO) emerged as the biggest gainer, in sympathy with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE: TSM) who reported strong AI-related sales in April. Broadcom advanced by $27.13 or 2.08% to close at $1332.80 for the day.
That performance was over 16 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.13%.
The biggest loser for the day was Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), extending its losing streak to four days. The EV manufacturer declined by $3.50 or 2.04% to close at $168.47.
