A New York Stock Exchange operator (AFP/ANGELA WEISS)
The New Stock Exchange, which flirted with new highs for the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 in the first part of the session on Thursday, finally interrupted its series of records to conclude divided on profit taking.
The Dow Jones index advanced 0.77% to 39,134.76 points, the Nasdaq, with its strong technological coloring, fell 0.79% to 17,721.59 points and the S&P 500 lost 0.25% to 5,473.17 points.
After a public holiday and a series of records, the technology sector caught its breath on Thursday, like Nvidia (-3.54%), which fell after a surge of several days which made it climb to the top of global market capitalizations.
The Nasdaq is coming off a series of seven consecutive records. As for the S&P 500, it reached its 31st historic high since the start of the year at the last close on Tuesday.
The Dow Jones, however, recovered on Thursday reflecting a slight rotation of investors, from technology towards more traditional stocks, from Caterpillar (+1.20%) to Chevron (+2.13%) via McDonald’s (+ 1.21%) or Merck (+1.30%).
“It’s not unusual for the market to have a bad day,” commented Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers, referring to the Nasdaq and the S&P 500.
“The decline is not staggering either and there is no reason to panic. We are seeing profit taking,” he said.
The analyst pointed out that Nvidia, the darling of the market, standard bearer of the artificial intelligence sector, had gained 20% for the month of June alone. “It’s crazy when you think about it!” he said.
Nvidia’s turnaround had a spillover effect on the Nasdaq, with Broadcom losing 3.77%, Qualcomm – 5.12% and Micron Technology -6.03%.
The competitor AMD, on the other hand, took 4.62% and Salesforce, the giant of client software on the “cloud” (cloud computing) which is also equipped with the AI tool, gained 4.31%.
Among the macroeconomic news, the real estate market continues to weaken, handicapped by high mortgage rates.
Housing starts fell in May to 1.277 million at an annual rate from 1.352 million in April. Building permit applications are also down sharply.
On the bond market, rates tightened very slightly after the publication of weekly applications for unemployment benefits that were lower than expected in the United States.
New jobless claims fell by 5,000 last week to 238,000. However, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is waiting for signs of deterioration in the job market before starting to lower its rates.
In response, the yield rate on ten-year bond securities rose to 4.24% around 8:10 p.m. GMT instead of 4.21% at the last close.
This better return on the dollar caused the note to rise by 0.34% compared to the euro which was worth 1.0708 dollars.
Elsewhere on the stock market, the action of the pharmaceutical group Gilead soared by 8.46% after the announcement of encouraging provisional results for an antiretroviral treatment against HIV.
For analysts at Mizuho Securities, “lenacapavir could be an important growth driver for Gilead (something the market has been waiting so patiently for this stock) in the medium to long term.”
Among the “Magnificent Seven”, Apple was under pressure (-2.15%) as Tesla (-1.78%) fell slightly while Amazon had the wind in its sails (+1.80%) after having presented new business-to-business services on its distribution platform.
The DJT stock of Donald Trump’s social network, Trump Media and Technology Group, collapsed 14.56%. The stock market watchdog, the SEC, has given the green light to the conversion of derivatives into shares, which risks diluting investors’ shares.
© 2024 AFP
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