Wednesday’s session in the S&P 500 index futures trended towards a consolidation phase, with choppy swings barely stretching beyond Tuesday’s range.

Overnight, headlines of Treasury Secretary Bessent planning to meet with Chinese representatives ignited a bullish surge, blasting past Tuesday’s high to a peak of 5689.75 within minutes. That level ended up holding as the day’s ceiling. Bears soon wrested control, driving choppy declines until the opening bell. Bulls clung to unchanged post-open, fending off a bearish dip tied to Alphabet’s news. The day’s spotlight hit with the FOMC’s 2:00 PM ET rate decision, which, as expected, kept rates steady. Despite the non-surprise, bears shoved the index into the red, finding support just below Tuesday’s low at 5596 where bulls sparked a recovery.

Jerome Powell’s press conference started at 2:30 PM ET, blending hawkish and dovish tones and cited risks of higher unemployment and inflation but stressed patience on rate adjustments, pushing June’s rate-hold odds to 80% per the CME FedWatch Tool (compared to 69% the day prior). A volatile afternoon saw whipsaw swings, with late buying tipping the scales. The session closed just above the midpoint at 5652, up 26.25 handles. 

Thursday is set to bring Q1’s US Productivity report and a tech-heavy earnings wave. 

NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) snagged the biggest win among top components, climbing $3.52, or 3.10%, to close at $117.06.

That outpaced the cash index’s 0.42% gain by over seven times. 

On the other hand, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) swooned as the biggest loser, cratering $11.85, or 7.26%, to close at $151.38 after Apple’s Eddy Cue hinted at integrating AI services from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic into Safari’s default browser, spooking investors’ confidence in the search-giant’s dominance.