The euphoria from Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech on Tuesday did not last very long. In fact, it began to fade immediately after the 4 PM EST close and the S&P 500 index futures spent very little over unchanged in the premarket session. Also, it missed the close by almost eight handles during the regular session.
Although the index did surrender much of Tuesday’s gains, it did begrudgingly with several would-be rallies off intraday lows, only to fade again.
Mega cap tech was the biggest drag on the index with all of those top components being in the red from 1.5 to 8 percent. Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ MSFT) hung in there, but faded $10 from its ChatGPT-induced intraday high.
For the session, the index declined by 45.25 handles at a closing price of 4130.50.
UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) was the top performer of the major components. For the session, the issue added $6.34 or 1.33% to close at $483.07.
That was over two percent better than the cash index’s decline of 1.08%.
An ill-fated attempt to introduce their AI platform, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG or GOOGL) had investors heading to the exits as the issue was the biggest loser of the top components. For the session, the issue swooned $8.02 or 7.42% to close at $100.
