(CercleFinance.com) – Expected on a stable note, the New York Stock Exchange finally headed up on Tuesday against the backdrop of the start of the quarterly earnings season.
While ‘futures’ contracts indicated a mixed opening, the Dow Jones posted a gain of 1.1% at the end of the morning, to 34,804.5 points, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.7% to 13,556.3 points .
As a reminder, Wall Street has tended to move on a heavy note since the start of the year, the S&P 500 index – the real benchmark for American managers – having lost nearly 6.5% in the meantime.
Investors are now awaiting quarterly corporate results to see if US equity markets are likely to rebound.
The first real test will take place this evening with the publications of IBM, but especially Netflix, whose stock market price has plunged by more than 44% since January 1.
Investors know that all it would take is for a few big names in the tech sector, like Apple or Amazon, to do better than expected in terms of earnings for Wall Street to start climbing again.
In the meantime, the technology sector of the S&P 500 is one of the best performers on Tuesday (+1.4%), with some analysts expecting good surprises after the correction that has hit the sector in recent months.
Companies have already started to publish their quarterly results and satisfy investors.
This is the case of Johnson & Johnson, which won almost 4% after the publication of quarterly results below expectations, but the announcement of a quarterly dividend up almost 7%.
Earnings news aside, housing starts remained broadly flat (+0.3%) seasonally adjusted last month, at 1,793,000 annualized, a level above the consensus.
The number of building permits for American housing, supposed to foreshadow future housing starts, also practically stagnated (+0.4%) at 1,873,000 in March, a level again above the average estimate for economists.
On the energy market, the price of oil continued to fall and fell more than 4% to 103.4 dollars a barrel, the reconfinements in China leading to a drop in demand for oil, which contributed to exerting pressure on the drop in energy prices.
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