The turbulent month of August ended the same way it began, with a modest decline. What happened in between is a whole different story.
The bullish momentum from the premarket failed to carry over into the regular session. While the index did make a run at the premarket high, it came up just shy and then came under selling pressure.
Heading into the final five minutes, the bulls were making their best effort to extend the winning streak to five sessions. However, they were overwhelmed by sellers bailing out ahead of tomorrow’s August job report. Others were content with index recouping a majority of losses for the month and were being cautious ahead of the rocky month of September.
For the session, the index had a modest decline of 8.25 handles at the closing price of 4516. After being down 265 from its July close at the low of 4350, the end of month rally trimmed the losses to 98.50 handles.
Among the top components of the index, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) was the biggest winner by a wide margin. Investors flocked to the issue following the announcement of app integration with Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP). The issue extended its winning streak to three sessions by gaining $2.96 or 2.2% at the closing price of $138.01.
That was much better than the cash index’s decline of 0.16%.
The worst performer of the top components was UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH). The issue was a victim of the rotation out of value stocks and into growth stocks. For the session, the issue declined by $14.95 or 3%.
