by Echo Wang
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange, buoyed for months by optimism surrounding technology stocks, caught its breath on Thursday, with the three major indices ending down, time to analyze mixed macroeconomic indicators before the Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting next week.
The Dow Jones index fell 0.53%, or 234.44 points, to 43,914.12 points.
The broader S&P-500 lost 32.94 points, or 0.54%, to 6,051.25 points.
The Nasdaq Composite, which closed for the first time above 20,000 points on Wednesday, returned below this threshold by falling 132.05 points (-0.66%) to 19,902.841 points.
While investors are betting with near certainty on a quarter-point rate cut following the Fed meeting next Wednesday, the subsequent pace of monetary easing in the United States seems more uncertain.
The indicators published on Thursday do not make forecasts any easier: unemployment claims were higher than expected last week while producer prices increased more sharply than expected in November, although the moderation of service costs confirms a tendency towards disinflation.
Rob Haworth, strategist at US Bank Wealth Management, thinks that today’s session on Wall Street was also marked by profit taking the day after the Nasdaq crossed 20,000 points.
The decline of Nvidia (-1.41%), giant of chips for artificial intelligence, also weighed on the trend.
In individual values, Adobe, publisher of software such as Photoshop, plunged 13.69% due to a revenue forecast lower than Wall Street’s expectations for its 2025 fiscal year, a sign according to analysts that investments to integrate artificial intelligence into its applications are taking longer than expected to bear fruit.
The health insurer Centene, on the other hand, gained 1.93% after a 2025 profit forecast higher than expectations.
Warner Bros. Discovery jumped 15.43% as the media group announced a separation between its declining cable television businesses and those of online video and content production.
(Written by Echo Wang in New York; with Purvi Agarwal and Shashwat Chauhan in Bangalore, Bertrand Boucey)
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