The action between Wednesday’s regular session and pre/post-market hours could not be more different for the S&P 500 index futures. In short, the intraday action was full of chop and whipsaw moves, while the pre- and post-market action saw smoother trends to the downside.
After a steady overnight decline, the regular session began nearly perfectly at premarket lows. The bears soon began testing the bulls’ resolve at the premarket low, but weren’t able to breach that level by much. Soon enough, the bulls caught a bid and were able to stage a comeback. Resistance was encountered near Tuesday’s low, just below the 5300 level, after which the bears took control once again. Support was once again found, this time near Friday’s low in the 5286 area. For the remainder of the day, the index futures chopped around between these two levels.
During the final 10 minutes of the session, the bears were able to temporarily breach support, but not enough to make new intraday lows, as the bulls soon had the index futures back up near their intraday support level.
The session concluded somewhat off the lows at 5284, a decline of 40.75 handles for the day. In after hours trading, the decline resumed once again after several S&P components released poor earnings reports. Breaching last week’s low, the lowest after-hours print was 5268.25, as market participants anticipate Thursday’s GDP data and Friday’s PCE data.
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) emerged as the biggest gainer once again. The chip designer was able to advance by $9.24 or 0.81% to close at $1148.25 for the day, marking new all-time and all-time closing highs by a small margin.
That performance was over one percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.70%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser ended up being Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). For the day, this less AI-focused chip designer declined by $21.78 or 1.54% to close at $1390.67.
