With the week’s action so far, it seemed the bulls and bears matched each other’s conviction fairly equally. However, bears pulled ahead during Thursday’s session to make new lows for the week in the S&P 500 index futures.
Overnight, the bulls and bears tugged on the index futures, bringing it into both red and green territory. At 8:30am EST, the index was settling above Wednesday’s close and October’s Producer Price Index (PPI) was released as follows:
| October Report | Actual | Expected | Previous |
| PPI (MoM) | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| PPI (YoY) | 2.4% | 2.3% | 1.9% |
| Core PPI (MoM) | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.1% |
| Core PPI (YoY) | 3.1% | 3.0% | 3.3% |
With slightly higher-than-expected inflation data, bears quickly took action to erase the early morning gains. Following the opening bell, buyers tried to instigate a rally but were quickly snuffed by sellers. The decline quickly broke the premarket low, and though the action turned quite choppy, the selling pressure continued for the rest of the session.
Just as it seemed the bulls would recover most of the day’s losses by the final hour, some hawkish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell spurred on sellers to take the index futures to new lows for the day. Ending with a bout of selling, the session concluded near the day’s low at 5978.25, losing 37.75 handles.
Among top components of the index, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the biggest gainer as market participants exited higher-risk issues. The tech giant was able to advance by $3.10 or 1.38% to close at $228.22 for the day.
That performance was over two percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.64%.
Continuing its retreat from the recent rally, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) ended up as the biggest loser among top components. For the day, the EV maker declined by $19.06 or 5.77% to close at $311.18.
