(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange is expected to take a break on Wednesday morning after lining up three straight bull sessions that took the S&P 500 index to multi-week highs.
Half an hour before the opening, the futures contracts on the main New York indices are all moving around balance, announcing a start to the session without much change.
The benchmark S&P index rose almost 1.5% yesterday, its best daily performance since June, which allows it to post a gain of 2.8% in the space of three sessions.
Wall Street benefited from the ebb in bond yields on Tuesday, as investors believed the latest comments from the Federal Reserve suggested an end to rate hikes was near.
The latest indicators have also confirmed the effectiveness of the restrictive monetary policy orchestrated by the Fed in terms of economic activity.
GDP growth in the United States thus came out at an annualized 2.1% in the second quarter, according to a second estimate from the Commerce Department, which had assessed it at 2.4% at first reading.
This acceleration in growth, compared to the 2% observed in the first quarter, is much weaker than the market expected, since the consensus was on the contrary aiming for an upward revision to 2.6%.
Another sign of slowdown, the private sector generated only 177,000 new jobs in August, a figure down significantly from the previous month, according to the monthly survey published on Wednesday by ADP.
A certain wait-and-see attitude could, however, dominate the markets on the eve of the publication of the figures for household income and expenditure, a statistic which includes the ‘PCE’ price index, a measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve.
However, the focus of the week remains the August employment statistics, which will be published on Friday, as well as their possible implications for the Fed’s monetary policy.
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