(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street is moving without a clear trend on Wednesday at the start of the session, torn between rather reassuring inflation figures and a worse-than-expected measure of consumption.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones fell 0.3% to 33,823.8 points, while the Nasdaq Composite rose nearly 0.4% to 11,137.1 points.
The diverging economic indicators published this morning seem to encourage investors to exercise some caution, a trend reinforced by the prospect of an acceleration in the publication of results in the coming days.
On the consumer front, retail sales fell more than expected in December, shrinking 1.1% after falling 1% the previous month, according to the Commerce Department.
On the inflation side, producer prices fell by 0.5% in December compared to the previous month, confirming the trend towards a slowdown in inflationary pressures.
Also on the economic front, US industrial production fell again last month, by 0.7%, according to the Federal Reserve, after falling 0.6% in November.
It should be noted that business inventories increased by 0.4% in November, which reflects a growing difficulty in disposing of inventories.
These elements naturally fuel the ongoing debate on the advisability of a pause in the Federal Reserve’s cycle of interest rate hikes, in the face of decelerating inflation and faltering growth.
In the foreign exchange market, the dollar retreated near 1.0830 against the euro in response to these indicators, which suggest that the monetary tightening orchestrated by the Fed is set to slow.
These statistics also had the effect of accentuating the decline in US government bond yields, with the 10-year Treasuries rate falling below the 3.40% threshold, a four-month low.
In terms of stocks, Microsoft lost 0.9% after announcing the loss of around 10,000 jobs, the equivalent of 5% of its workforce worldwide, which will result in an exceptional charge of 1.2 billion dollars in its quarterly accounts.
Johnson & Johnson drops 1.1% after results of an independent review of Phase 3 study data showed subsidiary Janssen’s investigational HIV vaccine regimen was not effective in preventing infection compared to the placebo.
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