The propensity of the S&P 500 index futures ending the week on the highs or lows has returned, and not in a good way. The bad news is that the index futures finished on the lows, established a three-day losing streak, and nearly all of July’s gains have been given up. The good news for Friday’s session is that it wasn’t an entire sea of red, as some components (most notably healthcare) stayed well in the green for the day.
The early edge during the overnight session went to the bulls, but they were unable to even reach the daily pivot level at any point. In the very early morning hours, an update to CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: CRWD) Falcon platform for Windows hosts went out to countless systems, which prevented them from starting up. The subsequent issues affected a myriad of worldwide systems, including those at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, all the way to airports, banks and some telecommunications providers.
Bears soon took control of the index futures, driving them down to match Thursday’s low. From there, the bulls were able to make a comeback, even reaching green territory before the regular session commenced. Off the opening bell, there was a tug-of-war between the bulls and bears, but resistance near the premarket high was too much to overcome, and the bears soon took the reins.
After initially holding support at Thursday’s low, the selling pressure proved to be too much and that level was breached too. Despite valiant efforts by the bulls to buy the dip, they were unable to sustain any significant progress back up as the session neared the close.
The session concluded somewhat off the day’s low (5542) at 5553.75, marking a decline of 40.75 handles. For what turned out as the worst week in about three months, the total decline was 111 handles or 1.96%.
Among the top components of the index, Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY) emerged as the biggest gainer, flipping its role from Thursday. The healthcare company was able to advance by $8.35 or 0.98% to close at $857.47 for the day.
That performance was over one percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.66%.
The biggest loser ended up being Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). After news of declining California registrations, Trump pledging to end EV mandate, along with reported halted production lines due to the CrowdStrike issues, the EV maker declined by $10.03 or 4.02% to close at $239.20 for the day.
