After Thursday’s sharp reversal from the opening, the bulls had to make a stand in Friday’s session, and they did. They did so without much help from the Federal Reserve Chairman’s speech at Jackson Hole in which he reiterated his commitment to fighting future inflation with the possibility of more interest rate hikes.
From a weekly perspective, the bulls defended last week’s low (4350 vs. 4365.25, which was made today). The bears easily defended last week’s high as the index briefly traded within 30 handles of last week’s during Thursday’s premarket session (4485.50 vs. 4517.75).
The extremely volatile and choppy session yielded a gain of 27.25 handles at the closing price of 4413.25. That brings the weekly gain to 30.50 handles.
For now, the index’s first three-week losing streak since late December has come to end. Whether that is a precursor to another January beatdown, or a minor correction from the late July high is yet to be determined.
Among the top components of the index, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) was the biggest winner. The issue was already having a good day when Wedbush analyst Dan Ives reiterated his bullish outlook on the issue heading into the final hour. For the session, the issue added $8.55 or 3.7% at the closing price of $238.59.
That was just over three percent better than the cash index’s gain of 0.67%.
Surprisingly, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) was the biggest loser of the top component of the index. One day removed from its blowout Q2 report, the issue sank $11.45 or 2.4% to close at $460.18.
