The S&P 500 index futures may not have ended Monday’s session with a large gain, but it did set up a great technical level for the near future as market participants await the FOMC rate decision on Wednesday, along with many top component earnings, including Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) releasing their report after Tuesday’s close.
Similar to how Friday’s Globex session began, the bulls started their buying spree straight away, helping to drive the index futures straight up to the double top near Thursday and Friday’s highs. Though the bears were able to gain back some ground during premarket trading, the bulls came back to push to a new premarket high of 5534.50, slightly exceeding Thursdays high and firmly establishing a triple top in that area.
The quick pop to new premarket highs could possibly be attributed to a report that the FOMC could lay groundwork for a rate cut in September, even though rates will most likely remain where they are in the meantime. However, the index futures gave up half their premarket gains by the opening bell. The first hour of the regular session was a tug of war, first testing support at Friday’s close, then testing resistance at the weekly pivot. Soon enough, the bears broke through support and made their way down to the daily pivot area. It looked like support would hold initially, but sellers broke through that support as well, reaching a low of 5481. The good news is that selling momentum quickly ran out after reaching that low, and the bulls started their comeback.
Once the index futures were back in the green, much of the afternoon’s action took place between Friday’s closing level and the weekly pivot. As the close neared, the bulls were making their way towards the pivot, but sellers had other plans for the last 10 minutes of the session. After 10 handles of progress was quickly erased, the session concluded in the middle of the day’s range at 5503, gaining 4 handles.
Most top components were either slightly in the red or green for Monday’s session, with the exception of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), which emerged as the biggest gainer by far. After a promising weekend update to its full self-driving software, along with Morgan Stanley making the issue its top pick in the US auto sector, the AI/EV company was able to advance by $12.30 or 5.60% to close at $232.10 for the day.
For those keeping track, that performance was over 93 times better than the cash index’s advance of 0.06%.
On the other hand, the biggest loser was NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). For the day, the chip designer declined by $1.47 or 1.30% to close at $111.59.
