After the Independence Day holiday, the S&P 500 index futures resumed (and ended) the week with the bulls in control. With that, Friday’s session also played out the propensity of the index futures ending the week on the highs or lows.
Overnight, buyers drove the index futures up to previous all-time highs, but sellers were ready to take profits, driving them back down to unchanged during premarket hours. At 8:30am EDT, June’s US employment report was released. In short, unemployment was slightly above expectations (4.1% vs. 4.0 exp.) as well as jobs added (206k vs. 200k exp.), while hourly wages were within expectations (3.9% YoY vs. 3.9% exp.). Straight off this news, the bears tested support in the 5585 area, coinciding with the previous week’s high as well as the low of July 4’s abbreviated futures session. Undeterred, the bulls bought this dip and led the index futures straight up into the low 5600’s. However, sellers were ready to take advantage of the pop and soon had the index futures trading around unchanged yet again.
The regular session began slightly in the green, and was soon approaching the premarket high after testing support at unchanged. Just as the bulls were making new intraday highs, a wave of selling came in to take the index futures back down into the red. Support was soon found just above the premarket low of 5585 and the bulls took it from there. The subsequent rally soon had the index futures testing resistance at the premarket high. After overcoming sellers near that area, the bulls continued their rally on to make new all-time highs.
The penultimate 5 minutes of the regular session saw a small wave of buyers push to new highs, but after peaking at 5626, bears and profit-takers took some of the day’s gains off the table in the final 5 minutes. The session concluded at a new all-time closing high of 5621.50, gaining 31.25 handles. That makes for a healthy weekly gain of 100 handles or 1.81%.
Among the top components of the index, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech conglomerate rocketed up to new all-time and all-time closing highs, advancing by $29.95 or 5.87% to close at $539.91 for the day.
That performance was one order of magnitude better than the cash index’s advance of 0.58%.
The biggest loser ended up being NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). For the day, the chip designer declined by $2.45 or 1.91% to close at $125.83.
