Operators of the New York Stock Exchange (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/SPENCER PLATT)
The Wall Street indices ended in scattered order on Friday, undecided after a rebound in the wholesale price index in July in the United States.
The Dow Jones index advanced 0.30% to 35,281.40 points, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.68% to 13,644.85 points and the S&P 500 fell 0.11% at 4,464.05 points.
The wholesale price index rose 0.3% month on month in July, while analysts had expected +0.2% and prices had been flat the month before. Service costs (+0.5%) drove the increase, showing that inflation is still present.
“This inflation data was stronger than expected and the market was taken aback as the CPI inflation index the previous day came out weaker than expected,” said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments.
“The reason this is important is that the Federal Reserve (Fed) has assured that its primary goal is to fight inflation. Clearly, we are seeing inflationary pressures in several sectors of the economy which could drive up inflation indices,” the analyst said. Oil prices, for example, have been on the rise for seven weeks in a row, which is driving up the price of gasoline at the pump.
While investors’ bets are overwhelmingly betting on the Fed’s interest rate status quo in September, the odds of a November hike rose a bit on Friday (33%), according to CME Group calculations on term products.
On the stock market, the technology sector led the decline. Semiconductor manufacturers have concluded clearly in the red. AMD returned 2.41%, Nvidia -3.62%, Micron Technology -1.64%.
Tesla dropped 1.10% to $242.65 and Meta fell 1.34% to $301.64, arguably unrelated to the fact that the electric vehicle maker and X (ex-Twitter) boss Elon Musk has announced that he plans to stage his fight with Facebook executive Mark Zuckerberg in Italy.
© 2023 AFP
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