Ending the week on a weak note, the S&P 500 index futures continued its August decline on Friday with another 100+ handle range session.
Following after hours earnings from some top components (more on that below), the index futures slowly drifted lower overnight, never reaching Thursday’s closing level. The pace of the decline accelerated once breaching Thursday’s low, soon finding some support in a broad area around last week’s low.
By the time July’s US employment report came out at 8:30am EDT, the index futures were trading nearly 60 handles below Thursday’s close. In short, the employment numbers were not good. Only 114,000 jobs were added, nearly 40% below the expected 185,000. In addition, the unemployment rate rose from 4.1% to 4.3%, above an expected 4.1%.
After a quick pop to touch last week’s low, it seemed like every market participant hit the bid following the employment data announcement. Within a few minutes, the index futures swooned more than 40 handles, eventually bottoming at 5376.50. By the regular session open, the index futures were trading back near the psychological 5400 level.
After some back and forth following the open, the bears gained the edge over the bulls and started to push back to the premarket low. Once the premarket low was breached, the pace of the decline accelerated. Support started to come in around the 5340 area, though the bears were able to push to a low of 5331.75. Once the bulls pushed back above the 5340 area, they initiated a relief rally to claw back some of the morning’s losses. Coming into the lunch hour, resistance was found near the premarket low. For the remainder of the session, the index futures mostly traded within this 5340-5380 area.
As the close neared, the bears tried to initiate a few selloffs just below the premarket low, but the bulls were able to fend them off during the last half hour. The session finally concluded in the lower half of the day’s range at 5376 for a swoon of 104.25 handles. For the week, that makes for a total decline of 123 handles or 2.24%.
Though Friday’s selling was more broad, there were still spots of green in the index, primarily in the consumer staples sector. Among just the top components, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the only, and therefore the biggest gainer following its earnings report released after Thursday’s close. Other than top and bottom-line beats, the company very slightly raised guidance for the next quarter. While some traders and investors initially sold the issue, buyers barely won out and the tech giant was able to advance by $1.50 or 0.69% to close at $219.86 for the day.
That performance was over two percent better than the cash index’s decline of 1.86%.
Conversely, the biggest loser by far was Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN), following its earnings report also released after Thursday’s close. The company slightly missed on top-line revenue, beat the EPS estimate by over 20%, but included lowered guidance for the next quarter. For the day, the e-commerce giant declined by $16.17 or 8.78% to close at $167.90.
