Wednesday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures was firmly controlled by the bulls, even with Thursday morning’s upcoming Consumer Price Index (CPI) data.
Similar to Tuesday’s overnight session, the bulls rallied off the previous close, but this time the bears were able to dip slightly into the red in the middle of the night. As the premarket session progressed, the bulls slowly made their way to Tuesday’s high and resistance held steady near that level. The regular session opened just below that point, but was soon tested again by the bulls after fending off some selling.
Fed Chair Powell’s two-day testimony to Congress resumed at 10:00am EDT, just as the bulls were pressing all-time highs. The more rate-related comments from Wednesday’s testimony indicated that the current Fed policy is restrictive, and their concerns include keeping employment high while still making progress to their 2% inflation goal. In addition, a rate cut could happen before that exact target is achieved, especially if the labor market unexpectedly weakens.
During his testimony, the bulls were able to initially push past resistance, but came up against sellers at 5650. From that point, the index futures were pushed back down to the initial intraday low around 5640. As the lunch hour drew closer, Powell made more dovish remarks including some of the above. The bulls soon overcame the early morning resistance and initiated a rally that continued, and accelerated, during the lunch hour.
The rally slowed as the index futures drew closer to the 5675 area, which coincided with the rarely seen R5 at 5678.75. In the final 10 minutes, the bulls broke through this level in a last-minute rally that peaked at 5690.50 before profit-takers took advantage of the gains. The session concluded near the day’s peak at a new all-time closing high of 5688, gaining a healthy 56.75 handles.
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) emerged as the biggest gainer. The chip designer was able to advance by $3.53 or 2.69% to close at $134.91 for the day.
That performance was over double the cash index’s advance of 0.99%.
There were no losers among the top components, therefore the smallest winner was JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM). For the day, the banking behemoth advanced by $0.17 or 0.08% to close at $207.80.
