Bears staunchly held resistance on Monday while bulls kept buying up the dips in the S&P 500 index futures, leaving the session with nothing worse than a slightly red finish.
Bulls started off Sunday evening trading by fending off an early bear push that carved out a low of 7763. Through the rest of the night, buyers worked their way closer to the psychological 7800 level, but profit-takers and bears stepped in before the regular session open.
Following the bell, and following the initial opening chop, bulls began to gain steam again and rallied the index futures to a new high of 7798, just shy of the premarket high. Right after hitting that point, sellers struck again and dragged the index futures all the way back to Friday’s close. Bulls defended support at that level and were somewhat successful for the rest of the morning.
An afternoon post from Trump, lightly poking the Iran-US bear, seemed to poke the bears into action as well, and they took the index futures down in a quick selloff to the initial low. Dip-buyers scooped up most of that decline, but support at unchanged had turned into resistance, and the action spent the balance of the afternoon in the red. The session concluded just below the day’s midpoint at 7776.75, losing 3 handles.
Tuesday, market participants can look forward to another load of earnings reports in the morning and evening.
Among the top components of the index, Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.B) emerged as the biggest gainer following its latest earnings report from the weekend. After top- and bottom-line beats, along with some analyst price target upgrades, the holding company advanced by $7.62 or 1.46% to close at $529.42 for the day.
That performance was still easily better than the cash index’s scratch decline of 0.03%.
Conversely, the biggest loser ended up being NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA). For the day, the chip designer declined by $6.41 or 2.86% to close at $217.55.
