The S&P 500 index futures continued to approach all-time highs Tuesday, but the journey there was anything but smooth.
The Globex session began with chop, but as China announced its new stimulus package, bulls started to break through Tuesday’s high during overnight trading. After peaking near all-time highs early morning, sellers were able to take the index futures back down to unchanged, but bulls brought them back into the green by the regular session open.
Off the opening bell, sellers came in to take advantage of the overnight gains. At 10:00am EDT, September’s consumer confidence survey came in below forecasts (98.7 vs. 104 exp.), further strengthening the bears’ resolve. The premarket low was breached, but support was soon found above Tuesday’s low.
Bulls soon picked up the morning’s dip and had the index futures chopping around below the premarket high for most of the afternoon. In the final five minutes of trading, bulls instigated a quick bout of buying to breach the premarket high and only gave up a couple handles of progress by the close. The session concluded virtually at the day’s high at a new all-time closing high of 5792, gaining 15.25 handles.
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) easily emerged as the biggest gainer. Midday reports that CEO Jensen Huang had finished selling company stock six months ahead of schedule sparked a sharp rally just before lunch. The chip designer was able to advance by $4.61 or 3.97% to close at $120.87 for the day.
That performance was a lucky 13 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.29%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser ended up being Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT). For the day, the tech giant declined by $4.34 or 1.00% to close at $429.17.
