In short, Tuesday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures was marked by rising tensions in the Middle East, with missiles being launched from Iran towards Israel.
The overnight session was spent mostly in the red, with bulls occasionally testing resistance around Monday’s high. By the opening bell, the index futures were trading about five handles below Monday’s close, but reports started circulating of an impending attack on Israel. That was enough to initiate the selloff, which swiftly broke through the premarket low into the 5700’s.
Most components took a dive following the reports, with the exception of many energy and defense issues which went the other way. The attack was confirmed about an hour into the regular session when the bulls were defending support around last week’s low in the index futures. The action turned to chop around the lows, bottoming nearly perfectly at the September 20 low.
The bulls were able to recover some losses during the penultimate hour, but sellers put a damper on the late-day gains during the final half hour. The session concluded in the lower half of the day’s range at 5759.75, losing 54.50 handles. In addition, many components were able to stave off some, and in some cases all, of the morning’s losses by the end of the day.
Among the top components of the index, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) emerged as the biggest gainer. The tech conglomerate was able to advance by $4.03 or 0.70% to close at $576.47 for the day.
That performance was over one percent better than the cash index’s decline of 0.90%.
The biggest loser ended up being NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). For the day, the chip designer declined by $4.44 or 3.66% to close at $117.00.
