On a turbulent Tuesday, the S&P 500 index futures seemed destined to give up most of Monday’s gains at one point, but the buy-the-dippers showed up in a big way to conclude the session with a modest gain. The wild action comes one day before the latest CPI data, set to be released Wednesday morning at 8:30am EDT, as well as PPI data expected Thursday morning.
Bears ruled most of the overnight action despite an early morning attempt by the bulls to bring the index futures back up to the Globex open. The bears were able to reach 5462.50 during the premarket hours, but that level marked a turning point for the bulls. By the regular session open, the index futures were trading above the weekly pivot, near 5500. Post-opening bell, the bulls briefly continued the rally past the premarket high, but were promptly denied as selling pressure mounted.
Shortly after 10:00am EDT, Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr spoke about changes to the Basel and Global systemically important bank (GSIB) re-proposals, indicating GSIB capital will only increase by 9% compared to the original 19%. From that point, the index futures took a sharp dive with top banks leading the way down. Buyers soon started to contend with sellers, causing the index futures to oscillate around unchanged for nearly the rest of the morning.
Just before the lunch hour, support was breached and the index futures took another sharp dive past the premarket low to bottom at 5448.25. It was near that point that the buy-the-dippers started to step back in, signaling yet another change in the day’s direction. Buying continued through the lunch hour for the rest of the afternoon, though the way up was more choppy than the way down.
As the close neared, buyers were able to push past the early morning high, peaking at 5506. There was only some minor selling in the final five minutes, marking the session’s close at 5504, a 24.50 gain for the day.
Among the top components of the index, Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO) emerged as the biggest gainer, along with many other chip-related issues. The chip designer was able to advance by $7.39 or 5.25% to close at $148.21 for the day.
That performance was over 11 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.44%.
Conversely, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) was the biggest loser by far. After the morning’s banking-related news was announced, the banking behemoth swiftly declined, though was able to regain some of the losses to close at $205.56, losing $11.29 or 5.21% for the day.
