Wednesday’s session flipped the script on the S&P 500 index futures, turning around its month-long rally with a firm retreat.

Overnight, bulls couldn’t muster enough juice to push the index into positive territory before bears clamped down. The selloff stretched into the morning hours, finding a brief foothold just above the psychological 5900 level. The regular session kicked off near the premarket low with buyers jumping on the dip, but resistance near unchanged levels stalled the effort before the lunch hour. 

After it was clear resistance would hold, sellers pounced to drive prices lower, around the same time as news hit about White House plans to choke China’s access to advanced AI tech, hammering tech names like NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA).

The slide steepened, cracking the premarket low near 5900 before a bullish retest of that same level. The dip-buying didn’t last long. The bearish action turned choppy in the final stretch, but sellers owned the close. The session concluded somewhat near the day’s low at 5861.25, shedding 98.50 handles. 

Looking ahead, Thursday offers a few earnings, a lone fedspeaker in the afternoon, and S&P flash U.S. PMI data at 9:45 AM ET.

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) stole the spotlight as the biggest gainer among top components. Fueled by AI product reveals at its Google I/O conference, the search titan climbed $4.58, or 2.79%, to close at $168.56.

That beat the cash index’s 1.69% drop by over four percent, a rare bright spot in the red day.

Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY) took the hardest hit among top components, sliding $22.06, or 2.95%, to end at $724.95.