In the smallest daily range since late March, the S&P 500 index futures slowly made their way to new all-time highs during Tuesday’s session.
Whether it was during the overnight, premarket or regular session hours, the market action on Tuesday could be summed up simply, as chop. The most significant move during the premarket session was off the 8:30am EDT news of US retail sales. The May figure came in slightly below expectations at 0.1% vs. 0.2% exp., and once autos were factored out, it was -0.1% vs. 0.2% exp. Though this move initially took the index lower, it still wasn’t by much as the index futures were back in the green for the regular session open.
At first it was the bulls who took charge, breaching the premarket high and pushing the index closer to all-time highs made just one day prior. The bears fought back and slowly took the index futures back down to test support near premarket lows. After support held above the premarket low, the tug-of-war continued between the early morning’s high and low.
The bulls were finally able to breach Monday’s high in the late afternoon, but only by one tick. In true whipsaw fashion, the index then saw a quick dip near the intraday low followed by a bounce right back up near where it was before Monday’s high was breached. As the close neared, the bulls were able to take out most remaining sellers, bringing the index futures back near intraday highs.
The session concluded near the day’s high at 5559.75, tacking on 13.50 handles before the Juneteenth holiday splits the week on Wednesday. The buying continued after hours to bump up the all-time high to 5562.75.
NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) took the biggest winner spot among top components as it rocketed up to take its place as the most valuable publicly traded company ($3.35T market cap). The chip designer was able to advance by $4.60 or 3.51% to close at $135.58 for the day, making new all-time and all-time closing highs.
That performance was over 14 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.25%.
The biggest loser ended up being Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). For the day, this chip designer declined by $26.35 or 1.44% to close at $1802.52, even though it made new all-time highs in early morning trading.
