Thursday delivered another volatile, back-and-forth session in the S&P 500 index futures, with bulls and bears trading blows before the index ultimately ended lower.
Overnight, the action stayed fairly quiet as bulls held onto the after-hours gains from Wednesday evening. The morning’s macro data mostly came in at or above expectations, May’s Core PCE Index landed in line, personal spending and personal income both topped forecasts, and Q1’s first revision of GDP came in notably above estimates, though May’s durable-goods orders disappointed. Off the news, bulls briefly rallied to a high of 7496, but profit-takers and other sellers quickly stepped in. Apple led the way lower, and once the opening bell rang, bears hit hard.
The selloff continued sharply until the index futures hit a low of 7390.50, at which point buy-the-dippers came in to drag the index futures right back up into the green. The rally turned choppy but pressed on until nearly reaching the regular session open, where it completely lost steam and reversed. By the lunch hour, the index futures were chopping around unchanged, and they stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Bulls and bears each spent time in the red and the green, but even a last-minute rally wasn’t enough to reclaim positive territory by the close. The session concluded below the day’s midpoint at 7423.25, losing 5 handles.
Tomorrow, market participants can look forward to May’s advanced inventories and trade balance at 8:30 AM ET, along with a few minor earnings reports in the morning.
There were no winners among the top components of the index, making Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) the smallest loser. The AI/EV company declined by just $0.41 or 0.11% to close at $375.12 for the day.
That performance was slightly worse than the cash index’s advance of 0.14%.
Conversely, the biggest loser ended up being Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) after reports that the company is raising prices on most of its products due to recent computer-memory price increases. For the day, the tech giant declined by $18.02 or 6.15% to close at $275.15.
