(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange is looking for a trend on Tuesday in the first trades after a series of mixed economic indicators, added to an international context that is not very favorable to risk-taking.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones index fell 0.1% to 38,752.5 points while the S&P 500 was almost unchanged at 5,476.4 points. The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.1% to 17,836.1 points.
Investors learned Thursday before the opening that retail sales had rebounded only 0.1% sequentially in May, while economists on average expected growth of 0.3%.
These data appear to confirm the recent slowdown in household consumption, penalized by the persistence of inflation.
“This is the fourth time out of the six retail sales reports published in 2024 that retail sales have come out below expectations,” recalls Bastien Drut, head of strategy and economic studies at CPR AM.
‘These developments will allow the Fed to begin to clarify their communication on future key rate cuts,’ adds the economist.
These figures put back on the table the hypothesis of a drop in interest rates in September, now estimated at 61.7% compared to 56.7% the day before.
More encouraging, industrial production started to rise again, increasing by 0.9% in May, but the capacity utilization rate stood at 78.7% in May, a level below its long-term average (1972- 2023).
At the same time, business inventories increased by 0.3% in April, as did business sales which also increased by 0.3%.
On the bond market, yields on American government bonds are trending downward after these statistics, around 4.25%, returning to their lowest level since the end of March.
The greenback benefits from the weakness of the euro which is still suffering from political uncertainty in Europe, even if the single currency rises timidly beyond the threshold of 1.0740.
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