(News Bulletin 247) – Wall Street showed heaviness on Friday, concerns for Boeing having prevailed over a first salvo of rather good quarterly reports: the Dow Jones dropped 0.4% to 33,886 points and the Nasdaq Composite fell more than 0.3% to 12123 points.
Boeing weighed heavily on the Dow Jones, losing 5.6%, following the aircraft manufacturer’s announcement of delivery delays on the 737 MAX, its flagship model, due to difficulties encountered by a supplier.
‘The MAX represents 28% of Boeing’s turnover in 2023’, underlined analysts at Jefferies, adding that the current difficulties could lead them to reduce their forecast for 737 MAX deliveries by 20% for this year.
Surprisingly, US equity markets lost ground despite quarterly results from JPMorgan Chase (+7.5%), Citigroup (+4.8%) and Wells Fargo (flat) all at higher levels expectations to.
An enthusiastic reception was reserved for the quarterly results of BlackRock (+3.1%), the world’s leading asset manager, but not those of the health insurance company UnitedHealth (-2.7%) despite a slight raising annual targets.
The session was also marked by US statistics, including a 1% drop in retail sales in March, while industrial production increased by only 0.4%, and this only thanks to stronger demand in heating.
On the other hand, investors took note of the sharpest drop in import prices in almost five months (-0.6%) in March, as well as a rise in the ‘UMich’ confidence index of the consumer at 63.5 in April.
‘Although recent data on the US economy is mixed, we expect a recession there soon, which will put further downward pressure on US equities’, reacted Capital Economics.
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