In another opportunity for dip-buyers, the S&P 500 index futures ended Wednesday’s session in a much better place than where it was near the beginning of intraday trading.
Overnight, the bulls were able to maintain a slight uplift in the index futures, but that was quickly brought to an end just before the opening bell rang. Escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia had sellers in a frenzy, swiftly bringing the index futures down to meet last week’s low once again.
Fortunately, buy-the-dippers showed up just as they did during Tuesday’s session and established support near last week’s low. From there, bulls were able to recover some losses, but the action mostly turned to chop for the rest of the session as multiple Fed speakers took the stage.
During the final hour, bulls took full control to erase all the losses, bringing the index futures back into the green momentarily. The scratch session concluded in the upper half of the day’s range at 5937.75, losing a single handle.
After hours, NVIDIA Corp.’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) latest earnings report dominated the action in the index futures. Despite top- and bottom-line beats, decelerating growth rates were enough to have investors heading for the exit. While the after hours dip in NVIDIA and (subsequently) the index futures was steep, most of the losses have since been recovered as of time of writing.
Among the top components of the index, Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY) emerged as the biggest gainer. The healthcare company was able to advance by $23.68 or 3.25% to close at $753.41 for the day.
For those keeping track, that performance was over 108 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.03%.
Conversely, the biggest loser ended up being Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). For the day, the chip designer declined by $2.10 or 1.27% to close at $163.25.
