(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange rose on Thursday, mainly driven by the surge of more than 14% in Meta shares, which is waking up the technology sector as a whole.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones advanced 0.5% to 33,492.2 points, while the Nasdaq Composite won more than 1.2% to 12,003.8 points.
With a gain of around 1%, the technology compartment posted one of the most significant sectoral increases at the start of the session, but was still outpaced by the telecoms sector (+4.5%).
Leading locomotive, Meta climbed 14.2% after reporting a quarterly profit well above estimates, reassuring investors about its ability to continue to generate growth.
‘The next growth driver could now be artificial intelligence, which could raise the valuation multiples of the title’, underline analysts at BofA.
Beyond the jump in the title Meta, the sector is benefiting from the good performance of Amazon shares (+4%), Intel (+0.1%) before the publication of their quarterly results, scheduled for the evening.
The trend is also supported by GDP figures suggesting a sharp slowdown in growth, in turn likely to prompt the Fed to cut rates.
Much less strong than expected, US growth slowed to 1.1% in the first quarter, thus marking a slowdown compared to 2.6% in the last quarter of 2022 under the effect in particular of a destocking movement.
These figures show that the Fed’s hike cycle that began a year ago, the fastest in more than a decade, is beginning to weigh on economic activity.
“But this deceleration hides an underlying resistance and a soft landing remains the most likely scenario,” tempers Christophe Boucher, chief investment officer of ABN Amro Investment Solutions.
This did not prevent a deterioration in the bond market, with a rise in the yield on 10-year US government bonds, which climbed towards 3.51%.
On the foreign exchange front, the dollar rebounded but reduced its gains, which allowed the euro to camp on the threshold of 1.1015 against the greenback.
Oil prices, affected by the deterioration in the economic outlook, began an unconvincing rebound, the barrel of American light crude oil (WTI) timidly recovering 0.3% to 74.5 dollars.
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