Wall Street: Housing, National Activity and the Fed

(Boursier.com) — US stock markets are expected to rise sharply on Tuesday. Before the market, the S&P 500 thus took 1.7%, the Dow Jones 1.5% and the Nasdaq 1.7%. The barrel of WTI crude rose 2.1% to $110. The ounce of gold fell 0.3% to $1,836. The dollar index fell 0.2% against a basket of benchmark currencies. Bitcoin is hovering around $21,000.

The American coast was closed on Monday to observe ‘Juneteenth’, for the first time in history. Thus, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq were closed in observance of the new federal holiday, adding to the list of market holidays.

In the economic news this week on Wall Street, operators will follow this Tuesday the national activity index of the Chicago Fed (consensus FactSet 0.35 in May, announcement at 2:30 p.m.), resales of existing homes (consensus 5 .36 million for the month of May, announcement at 4 p.m.), as well as the intervention of Thomas Barkin, president of the Richmond Fed.

Barkin will also intervene tomorrow, Wednesday, like Patrick Harker and Charles Evans of the Fed, but it is above all Jerome Powell, the head of the American central bank who will hold all the attention. Powell will deliver his semi-annual monetary policy testimony to Senate lawmakers. Recall that the Fed proceeded with a rate hike of 75 basis points last week, raising its federal funds rate between 1.5 and 1.75% in order to counter inflation. Fed officials have also set an aggressive course of rate increases for the rest of the year. New economic projections released after the agency’s two-day meeting last week showed policymakers expected interest rates to hit 3.4% by the end of 2022, which would be the highest level since 2008.