(News Bulletin 247) – Wall Street should open on a relatively lackluster note on Friday, as strong bank results do not encourage investors to push the markets higher after their recent rebound.
Half an hour before the opening, the ‘future’ contract on the Dow Jones evolves around balance, while that on the Nasdaq yields 0.7%, announcing an opening without much change.
The major US banks, which kicked off the earnings season this morning, all reassured about their ability to generate profits despite the many sources of concern at the time.
The title JPMorgan is thus expected to rise by 5% following the publication by the first American bank of a first quarter profit very much higher than forecast.
Citigroup should also start the session up after reporting an 8% increase in net profit, a performance above expectations, thanks in particular to the dynamism of its private banking activities.
Wells Fargo rose more than 2% in pre-opening after posting better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, driven by a sharp cut in spending.
The continued and gradual raising of interest rates by the Federal Reserve is supposed to boost the profits of American banks, but it also risks putting the most fragile institutions in a bad position, as illustrated by the recent bankruptcy of SVB.
The US equity markets could nevertheless be penalized by a movement of profit taking likely to fall on the sector of technology stocks.
The tech-weighted Nasdaq Composite has rebounded nearly 6.5% over the past month, taking its year-to-date gains to more than 16%, one of the best index performers in the world. global level.
On the statistical side, investors learned before the opening that US import prices had suffered in March their most marked drop in nearly five months (-0.6%) due to the continued decline in oil.
This development confirms the recent trend towards a slowdown in inflation, already observed in numerous statistics published this week.
Retail sales meanwhile fell more than economists expected in March, falling 1% sequentially after falling 0.2% the previous month.
These two statistics had little effect on the trend and the indicators expected in the afternoon (business inventories, consumer sentiment) are unlikely to have much more impact.
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