Friday’s S&P 500 index futures hung in the red for most of the day, but the bulls scrapped their way to limit the damage by the close.
The index futures spent most of overnight trading in the red, setting a quiet stage until a Trump post blasting China for “totally violating” its agreement triggered an early morning selloff. April’s PCE Price Index, released at 8:30 AM ET and softer than expected, sparked a quick bounce, but bears kept the premarket choppy heading into the regular session.
| April Report | Actual | Expected | Previous |
| PCE (MoM) | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| PCE (YoY) | 2.1% | 2.2% | 2.3% |
| Core PCE (MoM) | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| Core PCE (YoY) | 2.5% | 2.6% | 2.7% |
Post-open, a strong consumer sentiment report gave bulls a boost, only to smack into resistance near unchanged, which coincided with the premarket high area. US tech sanctions on China fueled a bear raid, sinking the index futures below Tuesday’s low to 5852.25. A Musk-Trump White House talk about Elon’s departure from being a special government employee, with Trump touting Musk’s ongoing support, seemed to help the bulls drive an afternoon surge to 5932.75.
Resistance stood firm at the day’s high, and a late flurry of imbalances capped the day with volatility. The session concluded in the upper half of the day’s range at 5916, losing 6.75 handles. For the shortened week, that makes for a gain of 99 handles or 1.70%. For the month, that makes for a gain of 329 or 5.89%, putting the index futures back into the same area seen at the end of February. A rough weekly double-top has also formed, with the last two weekly highs being 5993.50 and 6008.
Next week, traders brace for Friday’s jobs report, along with typically benign macro data, fedspeak and a small handful of earnings.
Eli Lilly And Co (NYSE: LLY) emerged as the biggest gainer among top components, climbing $15.10, or 2.09%, to $737.67.
That gain handily beat the cash index’s 0.11% drop by over two percent.
Conversely, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) took the biggest hit, sliding $11.97, or 3.34%, to $346.46, going the opposite way of the index futures during the Musk-Trump buzz.
