The S&P 500 index futures may have remained in the green for the majority of Wednesday’s session, but the bears clearly had their time in the sun during the intraday action.
Bulls held support at Tuesday’s close overnight into the premarket hours to start Wednesday’s regular session with a small uplift. The first hour was spent chopping between Tuesday’s high and closing area, until some revised jobs data came out. Between April 2023 and March 2024, there were 818,000 fewer non-farm payrolls added in the US, representing a 0.5% decrease in overall job gains for the year.
As market participants digested the news, speculating a greater chance of a 50bp rate cut in September, the bulls drove the index futures up past Tuesday’s high to 5655.25. The bids didn’t last long, however, as the bears soon had the index futures back at unchanged. After a decent bounce off that level, sellers were able to hit stops below Tuesday’s close to make new intraday lows. Buy-the-dippers quickly showed up to take advantage of the quick drop, marking 5613.50 as the day’s low.
Buyers were able to keep the index in the green for the rest of the day, even as July’s FOMC meeting minutes were released at 2:00pm EDT. The meeting minutes seemed to give the index a temporary uplift, confirming a high likelihood of a September rate cut but not revealing too much about the amount. As the close neared, the index futures were trading near where the regular session began, but the bulls were able to add nearly 10 handles in the final 10 minutes. The session concluded above the day’s midpoint at 5641.50, gaining 21.75 handles.
Among the top components of the index, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech conglomerate was able to advance by $8.43 or 1.60% to close at $535.16 for the day.
That performance was over four times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.34%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser ended up being Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL). For the day, the search giant declined by $1.33 or 0.80% to close at $165.85.
