(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange is trading on a note of weakness on Wednesday, the good performance of defensive stocks not enough to offset the impact of economic indicators below expectations.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones manages to nibble 0.1% to 33,432.4 points, but the Nasdaq Composite fell by more than 1.2% to 11,976.1 points.
The series of worse than expected statistics published at the start of the day reinforced a market context that was less and less favorable to risk taking.
According to the monthly survey published by ADP, the American private sector created only 145,000 jobs in March, a figure well below consensus and a marked slowdown compared to the 261,000 in February.
In addition, the ISM services index fell to 51.2 last month, against 55.1 in February, while economists expected on average to see it emerge around 54.3.
As for the PMI index compiled by S&P Global, it rose to 52.6 last month from 50.6 in February.
These data suggest that activity is tending to slow down, which could jeopardize the scenario of a growth ‘soft landing’ so dear to investors.
Global markets remain weakened by fears that the slowdown in the US economy will turn into a global recession.
In Europe, the Euro STOXX 50 was about to end the day on Wednesday down 0.6% while the Hang Seng index, the flagship index of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, dropped more than 0, 6% early this morning.
The indicators of the day do not penalize the dollar too much on the foreign exchange market since the greenback is gaining ground against the euro and the pound sterling, but is falling against the yen, the safe haven currency par excellence.
The bond market also suffered the blow, with the yield on ten-year Treasuries falling to 3.28%, its lowest level since September.
On the equities side, eight of the 11 major S&P sector indices are down, with that of non-essential consumption (-1.9%) showing the most marked decline.
Conversely, the defensive health sector gains 1.2%, driven up by Johnson & Johnson, which climbs more than 3% after agreeing to pay 8.9 billion dollars in the talc file. poisoned with asbestos.
Among other stocks in sight, FedEx is ahead 1.3% after announcing the consolidation of almost all of its operating subsidiaries into a single holding company in order to generate more efficiencies as part of its strategic plan ‘ Drive’.
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