During Wednesday’s session, the S&P 500 index futures made new all-time highs for the first time since March, once again entered the 5300 handle, and had nearly no bears in sight.
Inflation data kicked off the morning action at 8:30am EDT, with April’s CPI coming in at 0.3% MoM (vs. 0.4% exp.) and Core CPI at 0.3% MoM (vs. 0.3% exp.). That kept the year-over-year figures within expectations at 3.4% for CPI and 3.6% for Core CPI. Whether it was the slight beat, or the “no news is good news” approach, the bulls took this news and ran with it. In less than a minute, the index futures gained over 30 handles, where it then began to chop in the 5300 area.
There was some profit-taking and indecision off the open of the regular session, but the bulls held the line above April 9th’s Globex high of 5285, and the rally was back on. The bulls soon breached the premarket high and continued on into the 5300’s, surpassing the previous all-time closing high of 5308.50. There was very little intraday resistance until the bulls started to approach the previous all-time high of 5333.50, but they were able to break through in a last-minute rally to end the session.
For the day, the index futures tacked on a healthy 63.50 handles to make a new all-time closing high of 5330. The closing level was also not too far off the new all-time high of 5337.50. Plus, the index futures have now been higher in 8 of the last 10 sessions, with the only two losing sessions being down by one handle or less.
Among the top components of the index, Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO) emerged as the biggest gainer. The chipmaker was able to advance by $56.14 or 4.07% to close at $1436.17 for the day, a new all-time closing high for the issue.
That performance was still over three times better than the cash index’s advance of 1.24%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser was Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). For the day, the EV maker declined by $3.56 or 2.01% to close at $173.99.
