(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange lined up another session of progress on Thursday, in particular against a backdrop of end-of-quarter balance sheet dressing operations: the Dow Jones gained around 0.4% to 32,859 points and the Nasdaq Composite, more than 0.7% to 12,013 points.

‘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,’ explained analysts at Wells Fargo.

Market participants also seemed keen to place some of the best-performing stocks so far this year in their portfolios as the first quarter draws to a close.

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

Beyond purely technical factors, the US markets will be mainly influenced this Friday by the PCE price index – published at the same time as household income and expenditure – a statistic closely followed for Fed policy.

In the meantime, in terms of the figures of the day, the GDP of the United States increased by 2.6% at an annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to a previous estimate of 2.7%, showing that monetary tightening was starting to take hold. bear fruit.

On the employment side, registrations for unemployment benefits increased by 7,000 last week, to 198,000 against 191,000 the previous week, which again proved that tensions in the labor market were tending to ease.

In stock news, Merck gained 0.9% with full FDA approval of its Keytruda for patients with solid tumors and no satisfactory treatment options or alternatives.

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