(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange is lining up a new session of progress on Thursday, in particular against a backdrop of end-of-quarter balance sheet dressing operations which are maintaining the upward movement of recent days.

At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones advanced by almost 0.3% to 32,809.3 points, while the Nasdaq Composite won more than 0.8% to 12,027.2 points.

With a gain of around 0.6%, the S&P 500 index posted its sixth increase in the space of seven sessions, illustrating the favorable climate in which the markets are evolving.

“Investors are optimistic that the turmoil in the banking sector will continue to ease and that the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its cycle of rate hikes,” said Wells Fargo analysts.

Market participants also seem keen to place some of the best-performing stocks since the start of the year in their portfolios, as the first quarter draws to a close.

Titles such as Intel, GE HealthCare or AMD seem, from this point of view, to be of particular interest to them.

These adjustments contribute to the good performance of the New York indices: the Dow Jones has only been down around 0.8% since the start of the year, while the Nasdaq has posted an annual jump of almost 14%.

Conversely, some traders see the end of the quarter as an opportunity to recover certain unfairly penalized stocks, particularly in real estate, non-essential consumption, telecoms or finance.

At the same time, the CBOE volatility index, also known as the fear index, remains well anchored below the 20-point threshold, at 19.3 points.

Beyond purely technical factors, the US markets will be mainly influenced tomorrow by the latest inflation figures, by far the most anticipated statistic of the week.

In the meantime, the start of the day was animated by a series of economic indicators militating rather in favor of a slowdown in the pace of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

GDP rose 2.6% at an annualized rate in the fourth quarter, compared to a previous estimate of 2.7%, which shows that the institution’s monetary tightening is starting to bear fruit.

On the employment side, registrations for unemployment benefits increased by 7,000 during the week of March 20, to 198,000 against 191,000 the previous week, which again proves that tensions on the labor market are tending to ease.

On the bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasuries eased towards 3.56%, while the dollar started to fall again against the euro, which gained 0.6% around 1.09 dollar.

Crude prices continue to recover against a backdrop of a return to risk appetite, with a barrel of American light crude rising 1.6% to reach 74.1 dollars.

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