(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street should open slightly higher on Thursday morning after its break the day before, helped by solid results from Cisco and more encouraging economic statistics than those published in recent days.
Half an hour before the opening, the ‘futures’ contracts on the major New York indices advanced from 0.1% to 0.2%, announcing a modest increase at the opening.
However, these gains do not seem to be enough to significantly challenge the pause observed since the start of the week in the wake of the spectacular summer rally that got under way in mid-June.
Market players are visibly struggling to find new reasons to extend the momentum at work for two months, which has allowed the S&P 500 index to regain 17% of its value.
Particularly in view this morning, the network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems won nearly 5% in pre-market quotations after publishing Wednesday evening quarterly results better than expected.
“Orders are holding up and the outlook looks good for 2023,” argue New Street Research analysts.
In the wake of Cisco, the sector indices for technology and telecommunications should regain some altitude after appearing among the biggest declines yesterday.
However, the trend remains fragile, according to analysts. Yesterday, the S&P 500 closed for the second consecutive time below its 200-day moving average, which is not a very good signal.
The macroeconomic indicators published before the opening of Wall Street suggest, for their part, an undeniable resistance of the economic situation in the United States.
The ‘Philly Fed’ index – which measures manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia area – thus returned to the expansion zone in August, at +6.2 for the current month, after falling to -12.3 last month.
After two weeks of increase, weekly jobless claims for their part went down slightly the week of August 8, to 250,000, against 252,000 the previous week.
While they show good resilience in activity, these better-than-expected indicators also argue in favor of a continuation of the monetary tightening cycle initiated by the Fed.
It remains, now, to take note of the figures for sales of existing homes and leading indicators from the Conference Board, which will be published at the very beginning of the session.
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