Both the bears and bulls had their chances in Monday’s session, but traders who faded the small rallies in the S&P 500 index futures clearly won the day.
The premarket session started off on a positive note, with US retail sales for March coming in above expectations (0.7% vs. 0.3% exp.) at 8:30am EST. But once the regular session began, there was no follow through from the bulls. In other macroeconomic news, business inventories for February and the home builder confidence index both came in within expectations at 10am EST, but this seemed to be taken as “no news is bad news,” leading the index futures sharply lower.
Support was soon found at Friday’s closing level and the bulls were able to recover some of the morning’s losses, but were unable to sustain the recovery. Between news regarding the Iran/Israel conflict, a report of iPhone sales potentially dropping 10% in Q1, and Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) planning to lay off 10% of its global workforce, the index futures were soon in the red, making new lows for the month.
The bulls put up a fight in the last few hours of the session, but were unable to regain much ground. Monday’s session concluded 10 handles above the day’s low with a total loss of 63.50 handles at 5104.
Among the top components of the index, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) emerged as the one and only winner. The banking behemoth was able to catch some momentum from other positive earnings reports from Charles Shwab Corp (NYSE: SCHW) and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc (NYSE: GS), advancing by $0.10 or 0.05% to close at $182.89 for the day.
That performance was still better than the cash index’s decline of 1.25%.
The biggest loser by far was Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). Investors interpreted the planned layoffs as mentioned above as confirmation of a cooling EV market, and headed for the exit. For the day, the eminent EV maker declined by $9.57 or 5.59% to close at $161.48.
