(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange should start the week on a slightly bullish bias on Monday after its releases last week, the search for bargains seeming to whet the appetite of investors.

Half an hour before the open, the ‘future’ contract on the Dow Jones index fell back by 0.1%, but that on the Nasdaq 100 advanced by 0.3%, announcing a weak trend at the opening .

Over the past week as a whole, the Dow Jones had lost only 0.1%, but the Nasdaq had lost 2.4%, a slide in particular encouraged by the still very firm speech of the Federal Reserve concerning inflation. .

The probability of a rate hike of 50 basis points in March, and not 25 points, has thus risen to more than 9% against 3% around a week earlier, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

The climate seems to be improving on Monday, partly thanks to the bout of weakness in the dollar, with the euro returning to close to 1.0680 against the greenback.

The recent outperformance of euro-denominated assets suggests that capital is flowing back to Europe, helping to unwind long dollar positions.

The improvement observed on Monday can also be explained by the hopes surrounding the announcement of a possible slowdown in inflation on the eve of the publication of the highly anticipated consumer price figures.

While inflation should have accelerated in the United States at a monthly rate in January, the annual inflation rate should have slowed markedly due to a marked base effect.

Other indicators will be scrutinized by investors this week: retail sales figures will be on the program on Wednesday and those for housing starts and building permits on Thursday’s agenda.

If the results season is now coming to an end, the publications will continue over the coming days, with, among others, the quarterly publications of Coca-Cola and then Cisco.

So far, 69% of US companies have published better than expected accounts, which is below the five-year average of 77%.

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