(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street moved without much change on Wednesday following a speech by Jerome Powell, the president of the Fed, which took on the appearance of a non-event.
A little over an hour after the opening, the Dow Jones still managed to nibble 0.1% to 34,189.7 points, but the Nasdaq Composite ended a series of eight consecutive sessions of increase by falling 0.1 % at 13,621.8 points.
Investors’ attention focused this morning on the speech given by the head of the Federal Reserve on the occasion of the conference celebrating 100 years of existence of the institution’s research and statistics division.
But Jerome Powell absolutely did not mention questions relating to monetary policy or the economy, contenting himself with praising the ‘rigorous’ work carried out by his colleagues.
Investors did not react much more to the announcement of a 0.2% increase in wholesale inventories in September after a decrease of 0.1% in August.
Added to this is a decline in oil prices which continues to weigh on energy-related stocks, whose S&P index (-0.4%) shows the strongest sectoral decline at the start of the day.
The barrel of American light crude oil fell 1.5% to $76.2, bringing its decline since the start of the week to more than 5%.
Note that due to maintenance work on its computer systems, the US Energy Agency (EIA) has postponed the publication of weekly oil stocks by one week.
On the foreign exchange side, the dollar rises against the euro, which returns to the 1.07 zone against the greenback, following the announcement of continued disinflation in Germany campaigning for a more accommodating approach to ECB.
On the bond market, the easing of rates is confirmed with the yield on ten-year Treasuries falling towards 4.55%, far from the peak of more than 5% established two weeks ago.
Copyright (c) 2023 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.