In short, dips were bought and rips were sold during Thursday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures, following NVIDIA Corp.’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) earnings report released the day prior.
Following NVIDIA’s after-hours decline, the bears took the index futures to test support at last week’s low early on in the Globex session. After holding that support area near 5565, the bulls slowly made their way back into the green during premarket hours. The regular session began healthily above Wednesday’s close, and after some initial selling, the bulls continued their overnight rally. Buyers initially struggled to hold a bid above the premarket high, but prevailed after the first hour of the session.
The buying choppily continued until resistance was encountered near the week’s high. The peak for the day ended up being 5663.75, marking the fifth daily high in the 5662-5669 area since mid-July. Whether it was international headlines or buy-the-dippers that were taking profits, the selling pressure soon turned into hitting the bid during the penultimate hour of the session. The rest of the afternoon turned into a choppy mess, straddling Wednesday’s close.
The session concluded just below the day’s midpoint at 5610, losing a quarter handle, which now makes that a double close level for technical traders. Market participants also have PCE index data to look forward to, scheduled to be released 8:30am EDT on Friday.
Among the top components of the index, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech giant was able to advance by $3.30 or 1.46% to close at $229.79 for the day.
For those counting, that performance was nearly 150x better than the cash index’s scratch advance of 0.01%.
As readers might’ve guessed, the biggest loser ended up being NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). After recovering from Wednesday’s after-hours low of $115.01, the issue was almost able to make it into the green briefly during Thursday’s session, but still ended the day lower by $8.02 or 6.38% to close at $117.59.
