(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street ended a prosperous month of July on a positive note: on Friday, the Dow Jones rose 1% to 32,845 points and the S&P 500 gained 1.4% to 4,130 points, while that the Nasdaq Composite climbed about 1.9% to 12,391 points.
Thus over the past month as a whole, the first two indices achieved their best month since November 2020, with gains of 6.7% and 9.1% respectively, and the last, by jumping 12.4%, posted its strongest growth since April 2020.
The upward trend in US equity markets, in place since mid-June, was reinforced this week by the good results of technological heavyweights, most recently by Amazon and Apple, which unveiled their accounts on Thursday evening.
The action of the e-commerce giant thus jumped 10.3% after beating the consensus in the second quarter and revising its annual targets upwards, an announcement which reassured on the strength of consumer demand.
The title of the apple firm meanwhile rose by 3.3% following better than expected iPhone and iPad sales, which also reassured on the state of demand despite the impact of the current supply issues and lockdowns in China.
Investors also welcomed the quarterly results of energy ‘majors’ Chevron (+8.9%) and ExxonMobil (+4.6%), but clearly penalized those of AbbVie (-4.1%), Procter & Gamble (6.2%) and especially Intel (-8.6%).
In terms of statistics, household spending increased by 1.1% in June compared to the previous month in the United States, thus sending a new reassuring signal on consumption, which remains the true engine of the country’s economy.
The test was transformed by the publication of the American consumer confidence index, which recovered to 51.5 in July, a level slightly higher than its first estimate (51.1) and a marked increase from at the June 50 level.
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