Monday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures could be considered the calm before the storm of inflation data and FOMC rate decisions coming later this week.
After the bulls were unable to maintain a bid above Friday’s close and daily pivot, the regular session began Monday’s session in the red. Soon after the open, the bulls were able to maintain support perfectly at Friday’s intraday low, which was also slightly above the premarket low. From there, the bulls initiated a decent rally that took the index back into the green.
However, the rally slowed by the lunch hour as the bears fought back near the all-time closing high. From that point, the index futures turned into chop with some whipsaw moves for the rest of the afternoon. The good news is that the bulls were able to keep making higher highs and higher lows on the extreme ends of those moves. As the regular session neared its close, the bears tried to take the index futures off its fresh intraday highs, starting to near last week’s closing level. Once the closing imbalances were tallied, the sell-side was decently favored to the tune of about $2B. With this information in hand, the bulls were still able to initiate a last-minute rally during the final 10 minutes to hold onto most of the day’s gains.
The session concluded near the day’s high at 5371.25, advancing by 15.50 handles. While the index futures didn’t make new all-time highs, this marks a new all-time closing high as market participants look towards CPI data being released Wednesday morning and the FOMC rate decision being announced later during the same day.
Among the top components of the index, Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO) emerged as the biggest gainer ahead of its earnings report scheduled for release Wednesday at 4:15pm EDT. The chip designer was able to make new all-time highs as well as a new all-time closing high, advancing by $33.83 or 2.41% to close at $1440.47.
That performance was over seven times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.31%.
Conversely, the biggest loser for the day was Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). The EV maker declined by $3.69 or 2.08% to close at $173.79 ahead of its annual shareholders meeting scheduled for this Thursday.