Capping off July, Wednesday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures was full of earnings news and a nearly relentless bid, firmly breaking out of the recent four-day range and creating a new double top.
Buying started right away in the overnight session, with continuously higher lows made virtually all the way to the regular session open. About an hour before the opening bell, resistance at the recent quadruple top in the 5530 area was broken through. However, as the regular session began, sellers took advantage of the premarket gains. The good news is that this previous resistance area turned into support, and the bulls were soon back in control of the action.
The bulls were able to keep pushing to new intraday highs during the morning, but a gradual pullback followed as the lunch hour began. Soon enough, the FOMC interest-rate decision was announced at 2:00pm EDT. It wasn’t until Fed Chair Powell’s speech began at 2:30pm EDT that the index futures really started moving. Among the usual comments, Powell confirmed a rate cut is possible for September, but indicated it won’t likely be 50 bps. The bulls took the news in stride and pushed to new intraday highs. The late-day rally peaked at 5588.50, nearly matching the high made on July 24.
The last hour of the session turned out to be full of whipsaw 30+ handle moves, with bears and profit takers first pushing the index futures down to the premarket high, which was followed by a quick recovery, which was followed again by selling. The session still concluded in the upper third of the day’s range at 5558, gaining 85.50 handles. For the month, that brought the index into the green for a small gain of 36.50 or 0.66%.
Another top component, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: META), released its earnings after hours, which included top and bottom line beats, along with strong guidance. This gave the issue nearly a 10% uplift in after hours trading as of time of writing, bringing the index futures up with it. Traders and investors can also look forward to two top components releasing earnings after Thursday’s close, that being Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) emerged as the biggest gainer for Wednesday’s session. The chip designer benefited from strong performance and guidance by peers and was able to advance by $13.29 or 12.81% to close at $117.02 for the day. The issue has continued to rally after hours as news of Meta Platforms continuing their data center expansion plans was announced.
NVIDIA’s performance was a magnificent seven times better than the cash index’s advance of 1.63%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser ended up being Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT). After recovering most of its losses from Tuesday night trading, traders and investors seemed to decide declining cloud growth wasn’t enough to completely dump the issue. For the day, the tech giant declined by $4.57 or 1.08% to close at $418.35.
