(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street was preparing on Friday to end in the red a week which proved trying for the stock markets, with significant losses for the main indices.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones fell 0.5% to 33,257.4 points, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped more than 1.2% to 13,024.4 points.
Still volatile, the trend is moving up and down in accordance with the trajectory of recent days, in a context of heightened fears regarding a further increase in rates from the Federal Reserve.
Over the week as a whole, the Dow has so far lost 1.3%, while the Nasdaq has lost around 2.5%.
The major New York indices did not even attempt to move forward after the comments of Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta, who nevertheless mentioned a possible rate cut in the second half of 2024 .
Following Bostic’s declarations, the yield on ten-year Treasuries fell towards 4.93% after having come close to the critical threshold of 5% this morning, but it increased by 30 basis points this week.
This heatwave can be explained by the solid economic indicators published recently, but also by comments from Fed President Jerome Powell, who yesterday reiterated his desire to bring inflation back towards its 2% objective.
The decline in stock market indices is accompanied by a surge in volatility which sees the CBOE ‘VIX’ index – often nicknamed the ‘fear index’ – blithely crossing the technical barrier of 20 with an increase of 1.5%. at 21.5 points.
In this context, technology and other growth stocks, particularly linked to consumption, are sanctioned in favor of more defensive compartments such as collective services (+0.6%).
Oil prices continue to rise on the New York NYMEX market, with the prospect of a slowdown in the global economy not discouraging buyers given the persistent threats in the Middle East.
American light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) gained more than 1% to $90.3, bringing its gains over the week to almost 3%.
All these tensions obviously favor safe haven values like gold, which takes another 1% to return above $2,000 per ounce, a level not seen since last May.
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