After the historic rate cut and new all-time highs were made in the S&P 500 index futures last week, Monday started off the new week with a tighter trading range and more choppy action.
Bulls initially took control of the overnight action to test resistance around Friday’s high. At first, resistance seemed to give way, but some market-related news out of China and Europe helped the bears take the index futures down to test the weekly pivot area. Buyers were ready to pick up the discount, and before long the index futures were back to trading in the green.
The regular session began just under Friday’s high and the bears defended that resistance area initially. The bulls were able to break through that resistance as well as the premarket high by the end of the first hour, but they couldn’t sustain a rally above that level. In fact, the action just turned to chop.
Among all the Fedspeak throughout the day, Kashkari indicated he expects two 25 bps reductions by the end of the year, which is more or less in line with what market participants were expecting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
While the premarket low wasn’t tested, the bears were able to reach an intraday low of 5761 before the bulls bid up the index futures back near Friday’s high, where it remained for the rest of the day. The session concluded somewhat below the day’s high at 5776.75, gaining 14.75 handles.
Among the top components of the index, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) flipped its role once again and emerged as the biggest gainer. The EV maker was helped along by analyst speculation that the company will beat Q3 delivery expectations, and advanced by $11.75 or 4.93% to close at $250.00 for the day.
That performance was over 19 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.25%.
The biggest loser ended up being Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL). For the day, the search giant declined by $1.74 or 1.06% to close at $161.85.
