Discount with Wall Street close
NEW YORK (awp/afp) – World stock markets closed higher on Friday, bolstered by the upturn in US consumer confidence in August, reassuring news that comes on top of encouraging inflation figures.
The New York indices concluded another positive week, the fourth in a row for the Nasdaq, which is dominated by technology.
The Dow Jones gained 1.27%, the S&P 500 1.73% and the Nasdaq jumped 2.09%, driven in particular by tech mega-caps such as Alphabet (+2.36%), Tesla ( +4.68%), Apple (+2.14%).
European markets closed slightly higher: Frankfurt gained 0.74%, Paris 0.14% and London 0.47%. Milan lost 0.49% in the last exchanges.
“The resilience of US markets may be helping here, with falling inflation moderating expectations of the Fed’s rate hike policy being as aggressive as expected,” said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets.
Consumer confidence picked up more than expected in August in the United States, due to the improving outlook on the inflation front, which is providing relief to low-income households, according to the preliminary estimate published on Friday by the ‘University of Michigan. Consumer confidence hit an all-time low in June.
Earlier in the week, the PPI index of wholesale prices in the United States had been announced to have fallen by 0.5% in July compared to June, confirming the trend given by the announcement of the slowdown in US inflation. , all the same by 8.5% over one year in July.
The markets still seem to be betting that the US central bank (Fed) will ease the hike in its key rates after the publication of these figures.
But “it’s a risk because it’s not necessarily what the Fed says through the voice of its members but also during the last meetings”, notes Andrea Tuéni analyst of Saxo Bank.
“These data are not able to make the Fed change course, even if they reduce the pressure on the economy a little”, abounds Craig Erlam, analyst at Oanda.
The Federal Reserve has carried out several rate hikes in recent months and does not intend to stop any time soon, with the aim of bringing inflation back to around 2%, far from July’s 8.5%.
On the European side, a fall in inflation “seems difficult to envisage, energy prices being much more expensive there than in the United States”, also underlines Michael Hewson.
On the oil and gas side
The Dutch TTF, the benchmark for natural gas in Europe, closed at 205.85 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on Friday. It has jumped nearly 190% since the beginning of the year, consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A barrel of Brent North Sea crude for October delivery fell 1.45% to $98.15.
The barrel of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for September delivery lost 2.38% to 92.09 dollars.
Boosted health
The British pharmaceutical giant GSK (+ 3.57%) and its now independent former healthcare branch Haleon (+ 2.18%) rebounded after their plunges the day before, after reassuring Friday on the legal risks linked to a drug withdrawn from as of 2019, Zantac, used for heartburn.
It was manufactured and marketed by several laboratories including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the French Sanofi (+0.84%) which had also plummeted on Thursday.
The American Pfizer rose 3.77% after also suffering losses on Thursday.
On the Nasdaq, the market warmly congratulated Peloton, the manufacturer of exercise bikes (+13.60% to 13.53 dollars), which will cut 800 jobs and close stores to be more profitable.
On the currency side
The euro lost ground Friday against the dollar, analysts fearing that the euro zone could fall into recession due to the gas crisis.
Around 7:00 p.m. GMT, the euro dropped 0.55% to 1.0263 dollars for one euro.
Bitcoin was stable (-0.23%) at $24,160.
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