In yet another wild day, the S&P 500 index futures seemed destined to reach Monday’s low mid-session after market participants digested the latest inflation data. However, buy-the-dippers showed up in a big way to finish Wednesday back in the green before PPI data is released Thursday at 8:30am EDT.
Overnight, during and after the latest presidential debate, the bears mostly ruled the action, breaching the daily pivot and continuing lower. However, as the early morning premarket session continued, bulls were able to bring the index futures back near unchanged by the time August’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) data came out at 8:30am EDT as per the below chart.
| August Report | Actual | Expected | Previous |
| CPI (MoM) | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| CPI (YoY) | 2.5% | 2.6% | 2.9% |
| Core CPI (MoM) | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Core CPI (YoY) | 3.2% | 3.2% | 3.2% |
Sellers took the index futures straight down to slightly breach the overnight low, but it wasn’t too long before buyers were making new premarket highs just before the open. Once the regular session began, buyers pushed past Tuesday’s close and the premarket high, but were unable to sustain a bid. The lower end of the opening range was soon breached and a selloff started that took the index down to 5412 by mid-morning.
Whether it was comments from Goldman Sachs executives, NVIDIA’s CEO, the news of the US Gov’t considering allowing chip exports to Saudi Arabia, or some other reason, the buy-the-dippers began an astounding rebound led by chip-related issues and banks. The index futures kept climbing at a fairly steady pace, aside from some short bouts of selling. By the end of the lunch hour, bulls were back testing the intraday high, and soon continued higher.
Aside from some minor selling in the final few minutes, the buying continued for the remainder of the day to slightly breach the high from September 4. The session concluded near the day’s high at 5561.25, gaining a healthy 57.25 handles.
Among the top components of the index, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) emerged as the biggest gainer, helped out by some of the headlines as mentioned above. The chip designer was able to advance by $8.81 or 8.15% to close at $116.91 for the day.
That performance was a magnificent seven times better than the cash index’s advance of 1.03%.
On the other hand, the only, and therefore biggest loser among top components was Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B (NYSE: BRK.B). For the day, the holding company declined by $5.87 or 1.28% to close at $453.10.
