During the premarket session, the bears were in control and nudged the index to its lowest level over the last eight sessions. However, the bulls successfully defended the premarket low early in the session and held a constant bid for the remainder of the session.
After hovering around unchanged for most of the afternoon, buyers got a bit more aggressive in the final 15 minutes. Perhaps the catalyst for that being a buy imbalance of $1B for the close.
That allowed the index to make a new intraday high, but backed off in the final minutes to trim the gain for the session to 8 handles with a closing price of 4099.75. That made the loss for the week 48 handles.
More importantly, the index is now over 90 handles lower than the highest close for the year that was made last week at 4191.50.
A reduction in Russian oil production in March was the catalyst to make Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) the biggest winner of the top component of the index. The issue blasted to a new all-time high ($119.63) and closing high by gaining $4.85 or 4.23% with a closing price of $119.20.
That was much better than the cash index’s small gain of 0.20%.
Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) was by far the biggest loser of the top components of the index. For the session, the issue declined by $10.72 or 4.8% to close at $1212.65.
