As the big earnings week starts to near its end, and as the US Presidential Election draws near, traders and investors were ready to dump their long positions in the S&P 500 index futures during Thursday’s session.
The decline started nearly immediately as the Globex session began. During early morning premarket hours, bulls found support near last week’s low, but it wasn’t the last time the 5801 area would be seen. At 8:30am EDT, a myriad of economic data was released, including the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index as per below:
| September Report | Actual | Expected | Previous |
| PCE Index (MoM) | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| PCE Index (YoY) | 2.1% | 2.1% | 2.2% |
| Core PCE Index (MoM) | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Core PCE Index (YoY) | 2.7% | 2.6% | 2.7% |
While most of the data was within expectations, Core PCE remaining above the Fed’s 2% target seemed to give the bears a reason to come back into the mix and it was all downhill from that point.
The regular session began just above the premarket low, soon testing support near last week’s low once again. In short, market participants went short. Once that level was breached, the decline accelerated until support was found in the 5750 area. For the rest of the day, the index futures oscillated between the 5750-5770 area.
However, in the final 10 minutes, the bears came back with a vengeance to further the day’s losses and end near fresh lows. The session concluded at 5738.50, a 113.50 handle swoon. For the month, that makes for a loss of 21.25 handles or 0.37%.
Both Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) released their earnings reports with top and bottom-line beats after Thursday’s close, and as of time of writing, investors have responded positively to Amazon’s report, and negatively to Apple’s. While none of the top components are set to report Friday, traders and investors have October’s US employment report to look forward to, set to be released at 8:30am EDT.
There were no winners among the top components of the index, therefore the smallest loser was Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.B). The holding company declined by $4.04 or 0.89% to close at $450.92 for the day.
That performance was about half the cash index’s decline of 1.96%.
The biggest loser ended up being Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT). After releasing its Q1 2025 earnings report after the close Wednesday, which included top and bottom-line beats, investors headed for the exit after learning high AI costs are expected to accumulate. For the day, the tech giant declined by $26.18 or 6.05% to close at $406.35
