(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange is moving up slightly on Friday, buoyed by hopes of a slowdown in inflation, even if Intel’s results below expectations call for some caution.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones grabbed 0.1% to 33,965.1 points, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced more clearly, signing a gain of 0.4% to 11,561.4 points.
Over the week as a whole, the Dow Jones has so far gained 2% and the Nasdaq has gained more than 3.7%.
Futures contracts were however oriented downwards at the start of the day following weak results published the day before by Intel, the semiconductor giant.
Curbing the rise of the Dow, Intel fell by almost 7% this morning after announcing fourth quarter results that were much lower than expected and delivered an even worse than expected outlook.
The title pulls other companies in the sector down and the Philadelphia sector index loses 1%, while the S&P technology index drops 0.1%.
“Everyone wonders if Intel is not the canary in the mine”, explains an analysis following the stock.
On the other hand, American Express jumped 10% and signed the biggest rise in the Dow after publishing quarterly revenues up 17%, on record spending funds from cardholders.
But the rise of Wall Street is especially favored by reassuring figures on inflation which appease, a little more, the concerns linked to the monetary tightening orchestrated by the Fed.
Consumer prices measured by the PCE price index in fact showed an increase of 5% over one year in December, against +5.5% in November.
Excluding energy and food, the ‘core’ PCE index – the measure of inflation favored by the Federal Reserve – rose by 4.4% over one year, against +4.7% the previous month.
These data reassure investors as to the evolution of inflation, which should lead the Federal Reserve to ease off on the path of monetary tightening.
Outside of the PCE data, investors learned this morning that US consumer confidence rebounded stronger than expected in January, following the final results of the monthly survey from the University of Michigan.
The ‘UMich’ index thus came out at 64.9 in the final version, against 59.7 in December, while it had stood at 64.6 in the first estimate and economists were expecting it at 64.6. also.
Joanne Hsu, the author of the survey, nevertheless reveals that the economic risks are on the downside, with two-thirds of consumers surveyed saying they expect a turnaround in the economy over the coming year.
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