News that president Biden is dropping out of the presidential race gave way to the bulls in the S&P 500 index futures for Monday’s session, starting their run Sunday night. In addition, the rally was assisted by a relatively quick recovery by many companies from Friday’s IT outage, along with a surprise rate cut of 0.1% by the People’s Bank of China which gave a boost primarily to China issues.
The bulls fiercely defended Friday’s closing level early on Sunday night and made fairly steady progress into Monday morning’s premarket hours. The regular session commenced nearly 40 handles higher when both the bulls and bears started their battle for control. The weekly pivot area was tested soon after the open, but the bulls couldn’t maintain a bid to keep the index futures near that level. The bears were quick to test the 50% retracement area, but the bulls were ready and soon brought the index futures back up to the weekly pivot. This time, the bulls held onto gains slightly longer.
Before the lunch hour commenced, sellers brought the index futures back down to intraday lows yet again. This time, the bears seemed to take off during the lunch hour and the bulls started to notch up their bids. As the afternoon continued, the weekly pivot was tested yet again and the bulls were able to hold a bid in that area. The bad news is that they weren’t able to sustain the rally much past that point, plateauing at 5616.
Neither the bulls or bears were able to sustain any significant progress one way or the other as the close neared. The session concluded near day’s high at 5610.75, making for a healthy 57-handle gain.
Among the top components of the index, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) flipped its role from Friday and emerged as the biggest gainer. One day prior to its Q2 earnings report, the EV maker was able to advance by $12.31 or 5.15% to close at $251.51 for Monday’s session.
That performance was a fabulous five times better than the cash index’s advance of 1.03%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser ended up being Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN). For the day, the e-commerce giant declined by $0.58 or 0.32% to close at $182.55.
