Breaking out of its recent range, the S&P 500 index futures experienced nearly a 100 handle move during Wednesday’s session. The bad news, the move was to the downside. The good news, a V-bottom formed to reclaim some of the early losses.
The decline didn’t begin until the early morning premarket hours, but once it began, the selloff remained fairly steady. Following the opening bell, the action turned more choppy as the bulls fought back, but the bears soon resumed their selloff by breaking through Tuesday’s low.
At 2:00pm EDT, the Fed’s latest Beige Book was released that summarized current economic conditions. Among very minor economic activity changes, commentary that was included seemed to lean on the optimistic side. Soon after the release, the index futures bottomed at 5801 and bulls started their comeback.
In a reversal of the day’s initial direction, the bulls were able to sustain a rally that lasted until the closing bell and then some. The session concluded below the day’s midpoint at 5837.75, losing 54.75 handles.
Market participants then turned their attention to Tesla, Inc’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) Q3 report being released after the close. As of time of writing, the issue is up nearly 10% on the day after a significant top line beat and increased forecasts for 2024.
There were no winners among the top components of the index as of the close, therefore Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.B) was the smallest loser. The holding company declined by $0.84 or 0.18% to close at $460.61 for the day.
That performance was still better than the cash index’s decline of 0.91%.
On that note, the biggest loser ended up being Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO). The move followed broad weakness in the chips sector after ARM Holdings (NASDAQ: ARM) announced moves to potentially cancel a license for ARM intellectual property to be used by QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM). For the day, Broadcom declined by $5.87 or 3.27% to close at $173.51.
