(CercleFinance.com) – American stock markets should open lower on Friday morning following the publication of contrasting results from several large banking groups.
Half an hour before the opening, futures contracts on the major New York indices fell from 0.1% to 0.3%, announcing a start to the session in the red.
If JPMorgan was able to reassure investors with solid accounts in the fourth quarter, Citigroup suffered a heavy loss of $1.8 billion due to heavy charges and Wells Fargo saw its provisions for bad debts climb.
Outside the banking sector, the health insurance giant UnitedHealth, the largest weighting in the Dow Jones index, lost more than 3% after quarterly results marked by a surge in its costs.
All these results without much fanfare have further darkened the morale of investors already cooled by the increase in geopolitical risk.
Tension in the Middle East rose again overnight, as the United States and the United Kingdom carried out strikes against the installations of the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Oil benefits from this, with a gain of 3% to 74.2 dollars for a barrel of American light crude (WTI) just like gold, which is returning towards its historic highs.
On the economic side, the Labor Department announced that producer prices fell by 0.1% in raw data in December, but increased by 0.2% excluding food, energy and commercial services.
These figures do not have much impact on the dollar, which remains stable against the euro, nor on the yield of 10-year Treasuries, which increases its gains to 3.98% while remaining below the threshold of 4 %.
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