For the eighth day in a row, the S&P 500 index futures made a higher low and closed at a new all-time high. The index failed in its attempt to make a higher high in Monday’s session, coming up just shy of the record set on Friday (4711.75), only reaching 4707.
The index followed through on the weak after-hours session from Friday, falling nearly six handles off the cash close print of 4690.25 to 4585.75 at 5 PM EST. However, the index immediately found buyers off the 6 PM EST Sunday night open, ahead of the intraday low from Friday (4674.25), bottoming at 4676.25 a few hours into the session.
The index managed to start the regular session over 4700 but found willing sellers in the first fifteen minutes of the session. The index flirted with the psychological 4700 resistance level until 11:00 AM EST and began to weaken.
Another round of sellers nudged the index into the red, but found intraday support a few handles under the close at 4686.75 and reversed course once again. Heading into the final hour, the index was back near 4700, but a preponderance of sell imbalances into close instigated another retreat.
For the session, the index added only 2.50 handles to end the session at 4693.75.
Chip-maker Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), which has been higher in seven of its eight previous sessions, rallying from its October 27 close ($244.51) to its first close over $300 in Monday’s session. The one outlier during that stretch was a modest decline of $0.49 on Friday.
Although the issue did not make a new all-time high ($314 vs. $311), it added $10.52 or 3.5% for a new all-time closing high of $308.04.
That was much greater than the cash index’s gain of 0.09%.
Elon Musk’s advertised potential 10% sale of his holdings on Twitter resonated with shareholders of the company. Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) declined $59.15 or 4.8% to close at $1162.94.
PreMarket Prep Plus Monday “Briefing With Brent.”
Brent Slava, the head of the Benzinga Pro Newsdesk shared his observation on the markets from last week and was somewhat concerned about the lack of strong volume last week. Read more about the brief here.
