As was the case on Monday, the S&P 500 index futures followed its leading/top components during Tuesday’s session.
During the overnight and premarket hours, the bulls and bears battled it out between the daily pivot and Monday’s low. Just before the regular session commenced, the bulls seemed to have the upper hand, as they pushed the index futures slightly past the pivot. However, as the bell rang, the bears took charge and were eager to test support at Monday’s closing level.
At 10:00am EDT, the bulls were assisted by June’s still healthy consumer confidence report, coming in at 100.4 (vs. an average forecast of 100.0). Fresh from defending Monday’s close, the bulls instigated a quick rally back to the premarket highs. For the remainder of the morning, the index futures chopped around that area, narrowly making new daily highs. During the lunch hour, the bears took back control and drove the index down into the red to the premarket low. At this point, the buy-the-dippers stepped in, preventing new lows from being made. The index futures shot nearly straight back up, breaching the daily pivot and started to approach the weekly pivot area.
The final two hours saw several whipsaw moves as the bulls continued to test the weekly pivot that were followed by short sell offs from that area. The resistance level was finally breached in the last 5 minutes of the session, but only by 1.75 handles as sellers came in before the closing bell. The session concluded still near the highs at 5537, gaining 20 handles.
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) flipped its role from Monday and emerged as the biggest gainer. The chip designer was able to gain back nearly all of Monday’s losses, advancing by $7.98 or 6.76% to close at $126.09 for the day.
That performance was over 17 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.39%.
Along with many non-tech issues, the biggest loser for the day was Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B (NYSE: BRK.B). The holding company declined by $3.10 or 0.75% to close at $410.97.
