(News Bulletin 247) – The New York Stock Exchange moved up slightly on Wednesday, driven among other things by the good performance of energy stocks, even if the results below expectations of the banking giant Goldman Sachs encourage caution.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones advanced 0.4% to 35,093.7 points, thus aligning an eighth consecutive session of increases, while the Nasdaq Composite nibbled 0.3% to 14,396.2 points.
Futures contracts were oriented much less favorably at the start of the day following the lackluster performance signed by Goldman Sachs over the past quarter.
The merchant and investment bank reported this morning a drop of almost 60% in its profit in the second quarter, with a return on equity (ROE) – an indicator which measures the profitability of funds invested by shareholders – in free fall to 4%.
But investors preferred to focus on the announcement of a 10% dividend increase, which brought the stock up 1.4% in early trading.
Halliburton, the other major group that published its accounts before the opening, for its part yielded 2.7%.
The trend is supported by the rise in oil prices, even if the uncertainties surrounding US growth remain very present.
Oil stocks are driven by the rise of nearly 0.8% to 76.4 dollars a barrel of US light crude oil (WTI) following the announcement of a decline in weekly oil inventories last week in the United States.
Within the Dow Jones, Chevron advances by 0.9% and signs one of the strongest increases in the index.
On the macroeconomic front, the Commerce Department reported an 8% drop in housing starts in June, a level overall below economists’ expectations.
For their part, building permits for American housing – supposed to prefigure future housing starts – fell by 3.7%, a level also well below the market consensus.
The indicator has hardly any impact on the dollar, which is rising against the euro, now back below 1.12, while the yield on ten-year Treasuries is recovering beyond 3.77%.
The earnings season will experience a brutal acceleration this evening with the highly anticipated publications of the technology groups IBM, Netflix and Tesla.
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