(News Bulletin 247) – After the heavy downturn from August 13 to 18 (worst stock market week since mid-March, with a ‘lowest’ since June 27 to close the ‘3 witches’ deadline), the new week got off to a good start on Wall Street with an S&P500 (+0.7%) which returned to 4400 and an explosive Nasdaq which gained almost +1.6%.

The first hour was a little hesitant, with the Dow Jones trading clearly in the red while the S&P500 picked up +0.2%… but the buyers regained control and held on tight from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., literally ignoring the persistent tension in interest rates, with yields at the zenith across the entire curve, from the very short to the very long term.

The Dow Jones remained in the red for -0.1% (-0.5% due to Johnson & Johnson at -3% and Nike at -2%) which was largely offset by a ‘SOX’ index which jumped +2.8% in the wake of Palo Alto +14.8%, Nvidia +8.5% (to $470, 1% from its all-time high), Broadcom and ZScaler +4.8%, Applied +4.3%, AMD and NXP +2.6%.
Also note Tesla’s big boost to the Nasdaq-100 (+1.65%) with +7.3%, Meta having also participated in the party with +2.4%.

This fourth week of August will be marked on Thursday by the traditional Jackson Hole symposium, bringing together the main central bankers of the world who will meet in a context of questions about the evolution of monetary policies.

This meeting, always very followed by the markets, will conclude with the intervention of Jerome Powell, the president of the Federal reserve.

Investors are hoping for signs of weakness to be taken into account (such as the ISM and PMI, which have been falling systematically, month after month since the start of the year), which would allow them to rule out the scenario of a further increase in key rates. mid-September.

But with the rise in oil and fuel prices, there is clearly a re-emergence of a risk of deterioration in the inflation figures in August: this seemed to be reflected by a ’10-year’ period which stretched from +10Pts at 4.345%, a ‘6 month’ at 5.51% and a ’30 year’ at 4.46% (against 3.84% exactly one month ago).

‘Powell should adopt a less nuanced speech during Jackson Hole from our point of view, knowing that the latest indicators clearly show a risk of rising inflation’, warned the economists of BofA.

The foreign exchange market remained very calm with the dollar frozen around 1.0900E, a ‘flat’ $-Index at 103.3.
The WTI consolidated by -0.6% towards $80.25 on the NYMEX.

Copyright (c) 2023 News Bulletin 247. All rights reserved.