After making fresh all-time highs the day before, Q3’s quad witching seemed to put a bit of a damper on the S&P 500 index futures and its components during Friday’s session.
The start of Friday’s Globex session was the polar opposite of Thursday’s session, opening in the red and at a level that would stay as the day’s high. From that point, the bears were initially able to make small progress overnight, but the real decline started about an hour before the regular session began.
Buy-the-dippers brought a small amount of relief in the opening minutes of the regular session, but the selling pressure soon overwhelmed the bulls and the selloff resumed. The choppy decline eventually bottomed at 5733.50, just before Fed Governor Waller’s TV appearance at 11:30am EDT.
Waller commented that his decision regarding the 50bp rate cut was due to inflation softening quicker than expected. He also added that he is concerned that inflation may even be below the Fed’s 2% target. As his speech continued, the index futures rebounded to make their way back near unchanged.
After another bout of selling in the afternoon, the bulls tried for one more dip buy, which briefly brought the index back near the Globex high. Unfortunately, sellers took advantage of the rally during the final 15 minutes to conclude the session above the day’s midpoint at 5762, losing 16 handles. For the week, that still makes for a decent gain of 71 handles or 1.25%.
Among the top components of the index, Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO) emerged as the biggest gainer. The chip designer was able to advance by $3.68 or 2.20% to close at $171.10 for the day.
That performance was over two percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.17%.
Flipping its role from Thursday, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) ended up being the biggest loser among top components. For the day, the EV maker declined by $5.67 or 2.32% to close at $238.25.
