Ending the month and third quarter on a high note, Monday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures finished in the green. However, it wasn’t clear that would be the case until the last half hour of trading.
Once the Globex session began, the bulls and bears battled for dominance, but the bears gained a slight edge over the bulls by the regular session open. Buyers were quick to test resistance near Friday’s closing level, but resistance held in that area for the rest of the morning. During the lunch hour, bulls were able to bring the index futures back into the green, but not for long and not by much.
Before Fed Chair Jerome Powell began his speech at 1:55pm EDT, the index futures were trading near unchanged. Among the highlights, he indicated that the Fed aims to lower rates “over time,” and that policy is not on a preset path. Once his speech began, the bears were able to initiate a sharp selloff to breach the premarket low, bottoming at 5756.25. However, as his speech continued, buy-the-dippers showed up to bring the index futures back up near unchanged. Instead of a half-point cut, Fed funds futures prices now favor a quarter-point cut by November’s meeting, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
After Powell’s speech concluded, the rally continued and accelerated into the close as market participants adjusted their quarter-end positions. The session concluded at 5814.25 near the day’s freshly-made high, gaining 23 handles. For the quarter, that makes for a healthy gain of 280.50 handles or 5.07%.
Among the top components of the index, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech giant was able to advance by $5.21 or 2.29% to close at $233.00 for the day.
That performance was a fabulous five times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.40%.
The biggest loser ended up being Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN). For the day, the e-commerce giant declined by $1.64 or 0.87% to close at $186.33.
