Capping off a choppy week, the S&P 500 index futures ended Friday’s session with a healthy gain. This came after a rollercoaster of intraday action, mostly from market participants digesting Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole.
Bulls slowly bid up the index futures during the premarket session, and after a quick round of profit-taking post-open, buyers had the index futures trading near the premarket high right before Jerome Powell’s speech.
At 10:00am EDT, Powell began his speech, which turned out to be fairly dovish. “The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell said, indicating an upcoming rate cut in September. He cited confidence that inflation is on the path to 2%, and that the Fed doesn’t want to welcome further labor market cooling. According to the CME FedWatch tool, chances of a 50bp rate cut in September grew from 24% to 36.5%, and chances of cuts totalling 75bps or more are now above 60% for the November meeting.
During the beginning of the speech, bulls and algos lifted offers, driving the index futures straight up at first. As the speech continued, some violent moves were seen in both directions, eventually finding a high of 5662.50. Once the speech came to a close, bears and profit-takers had their way and soon had the index futures back to making new intraday lows.
The quick moves didn’t end there, as the bulls took the index futures from the 5610’s back near the intraday highs. By the lunch hour, sellers were making new intraday lows but the index futures still remained above the premarket low, which was also above Thursday’s close. Once the lunch hour ended, bulls took back the reins and remained (mostly) in control for the rest of the session.
Nearing the close, sellers tried to take the index futures back to the day’s midpoint, but the bulls fought back in the final 15 minutes. The session concluded somewhat near the day’s high at 5652.50, gaining 58.50 handles. For the week, that makes for a gain of 74.25 handles or 1.33%, bringing the index futures within 1.2% of the front-month contract’s all-time high.
Changing its role from Thursday, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) emerged as the biggest gainer among top components. The somewhat rate-sensitive EV maker was able to advance by $9.66 or 4.59% to close at $220.32 for the day, recovering most of Thursday’s losses.
That performance was still over four times better than the cash index’s healthy advance of 1.06%.
Conversely, the biggest loser was Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META). For the day, the tech conglomerate declined by $3.93 or 0.74% to close at $528.00.
