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1) it is the most liquid futures contract in the world; for all intents and purposes, unless you're trading huge notional sizes, you have all the liquidity you can get
2) it is used to hedge SPX options, which itself is the world's primary equity hedging vehicle; this means institutions and dealers are active, which contributes to (1) above
3) it tracks a diverse, cap-weighted index; SPX has gotten very top-heavy, BUT not so much so that it's dominated by one company (like NDX), so while a top 5 holding's earnings CAN move it, it's not completely dominated by a handful of stocks
4) due to options, its behavior these days is a bit more cyclical, and structural options flows lend a bit more predictability to it
I can say that "I like the way it moves" but that is really a function of its liquidity. NQ is an example of a contract which has good liquidity (not great, but good), but still moves very aggressively much of the time, and ES tends to be a bit more well behaved (but like its siblings, when it gets wild, it is as dangerous as anything).
I'm going to throw in a plug for my 2nd favorite contract:
MJNK (Nikkei, on the OSE, not the untradeable one on CME)
The mini Nikkei is the most liquid futures contract in Asia, and enjoys the same benefits due to this that ES does. I will say that it can still act like a thin market; for example, it will squeeze and any non-machine bids/offers simply won't get hit, so you have to be willing to hit out of a trade that starts to fail. The Nikkei is annoyingly price-weighted like the DJIA, and very top heavy with Fast and Softbank hugely weighted at the top.
Despite that, it's really a great contract to trade when there's action. There are really not that many alternatives for the Asian market hours. The HSI was great to trade before sanctions made it illegal, and some of the other contracts are simply too thin for my taste: topix, kospi, ASX, for example.
