(News Bulletin 247) – Very calm session, positive from the first exchanges, but with spreads that quickly stabilized around +0.4%: investors remain relatively calm, but not very active, 48 hours before the Fed’s press conference on Wednesday (8:00 p.m.).
Even if the gains are modest, this extends a series of absolutely extraordinary increases of 11 consecutive sessions for the Dow Jones (+0.5% to 35,411), a 10th of 11 for the S&P500 (+0.4% to 4,555) and a 9th of 11 for the Nasdaq (+0.2% to 14,059).
The ‘rebalancing’ of the weightings within the Nasdaq was largely integrated since it did not give rise to any turmoil on Friday, neither this Monday when trading resumed… nor during the following hours.
The ‘Soxx’ semiconductor index, which fell -3.75% last week, ended completely unchanged at 510.65: Applied Materials gained +1.4%, but ASML lost -1.3%, Intel -1.2%, AMD -0.3%.
On the GAFAMT side, Alphabet gained +1.3%, Tesla +3.5%, Amazon lost -0.9%.
The ‘S&P’ was supported by financials with Keycorp +4%, Discovery Fnl and Citizens Financial +3.6%, Zion Group +2.6%, Bank of America +2.1%, Goldman Sachs +2%, then by mining companies with Freeport +3.7%, and especially oil companies with Halliburton +3.6%, Occidental +2.6%, Hess +2.4%, Chevron +2%.
Indeed, and this is the ‘fact of the day’, the barrel of WTI soared by +2.65% towards $79, pulverizing the resistance of $77, for the first time since April 28.
On the bond side, the T-Bonds reversed the trend over the hours: the 10-year yield initially eased by -4Pts below 3.800%, but it deteriorated this evening by +4Pts to 3.8800% (perhaps because fuel costs will go up).
However, the US private sector saw its growth slow again significantly in July, according to S&P Global, whose composite PMI index stood at 52.0 – a five-month low – in flash estimate for the current month, compared to 53.2 in June.
‘Service providers observed a lower increase in their production, while manufacturers reported broadly unchanged levels of production at the start of the third quarter’, specify the investigators.
On the Fed side, a 25 basis point hike (towards 5.50%) seems very likely despite recent progress in the fight against inflation… but it could be the 11th and last in the series, if the central bank listens to the consensus of investors who dream of this scenario.
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