Between Friday morning’s opening imbalances from quad expirations and closing imbalances at least partially attributable to index rebalancing, the S&P 500 index was composed of a sea of red and green. For the index futures, this manifested as chop, and lots of it.
Overnight, the bulls were initially able to keep the index futures above Thursday’s close for the most part, but the bears had control by early morning premarket hours. The bulls were able to sustain support near Thursday’s low during the premarket session, and even rallied back to test resistance near Thursday’s close more than once.
The regular session commenced in the red and the bulls were soon testing support at the premarket low, which coincided with Thursday’s low. Once breached, sellers quickly took the index futures lower, bottoming at 5519. Nearly as swift as the selloff, buyers soon had the index back above Thursday’s low, and began a choppy rally up to Thursday’s close. Bulls were able to breach that level slightly, but selling pressure soon overwhelmed the buyers. After finding support near Thursday’s low once again, the last two hours of the regular session was spent in the middle of the day’s range.
Once closing orders were accounted for, the imbalances favored the buy side to the tune of about $4.3B. The final 10 minutes saw a wave of buyers who were then followed by sellers who ultimately won the day. The session concluded in the middle of the day’s range at 5534.25, losing a total of 10.25 handles. For the week, that still makes for a slight gain of 29.50 handles or 0.54%.
There was wicked rotation throughout the market, including the top components of the index, and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech giant was able to advance by $3.33 or 1.89% to close at $179.63 for the day, making new all-time and all-time closing highs.
That performance was just over two percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.13%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser among top components ended up being Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). For the day, the chip designer declined by $75.93 or 4.38% to close at $1658.63.
