(Boursier.com) – After a three-day weekend to celebrate Christmas, Wall Street is progressing Monday evening in a calm market at the end of the year. The S&P 500 index, which finished last Thursday with a record, continues to rise. Amid health fears related to the progression of the Omicron variant, investors appreciated the announcements by the Chinese central bank, which on Monday pledged to maintain a flexible monetary policy in 2022 in order to stabilize growth and reduce the costs of business financing in a context of growing economic difficulties.
At two hours from the closing, the Dow jones up 0.75% to 36,219 points, while the large index S&P 500 gains 1.17% to 4,780 pts and that the Nasdaq Composite, rich in technological and biotech stocks, rose 1.25% to 15,849 pts.
Air transport disrupted by the Omicron variant
On the stock side, airlines and cruise lines are struggling after disruptions linked to Omicron, which resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights over the Christmas weekend, and threaten the smooth running of cruises. Among the most affected titles are American Airlines (-0.5%), Delta Air Lines (-0.8%), United airlines (-0.87%) or Southwest Airlines (-0.5%), as well as Royal Caribbean (-2%) and Carnival (-1.4%).
According to the flight tracking site FlightAware.com, more than 8,000 flights had to be canceled around the world over the Christmas weekend, and many more suffered delays. Pilots, flight attendants and other staff had to be quarantined after being exposed to Covid, forcing companies like Lufthansa, SAS, Delta, United Airlines or Alaska Airlines to cancel flights .
Airline companies have asked U.S. health authorities (CDC) to reduce the time of isolation of infected vaccinated employees to five days instead of 10 days after returning from a negative test.
WTI oil returns above $ 75 a barrel
Oil is on the rise, a barrel of American light crude WTI Monday night gaining 2.6% to $ 75.71 (February futures contract on the Nymex), while the Brent de Mer du Nord jumped 3.4% to $ 78.36 (March contract). The WTI had regained 4% last week, and climbed more than 50% since the start of 2021, supported by the recovery in global demand, after the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Gold on Monday night sold 0.2% to $ 1,808.50 an ounce on Comex (February contract). the bitcoin in the evening increased by 1.9% over 24 hours, around $ 51,750, according to the Coindesk site.
Few changes are observed in the forex market, where the dollar index gains 0.07% to 96.09 pts against a basket of currencies, while the euro 0.08% advance $ 1.1327. In bond markets, the yield of the T-Bond at 10 years yields 1 basis point to 1.48%.
China ready to act to support growth
The People’s Bank of China (BPC) therefore announced on Monday its intention to maintain a flexible monetary policy in 2022: “a prudent monetary policy is flexible, reasonable and appropriate,” she said.
In a statement summarizing its meeting for the coming year, the central bank added that it would strengthen the supervision of financial companies and gradually put in place a system to manage the financing of the real estate sector. The indebtedness of the most important Chinese real estate developers shook in 2021 this sector essential to the economic growth of the country.
In the United States, macroeconomic news was slim on Monday. The Dallas Fed’s regional manufacturing index fell to 8.1 in December, against a FactSet consensus of 13.8 and a level of 11.8 a month in November, thus reflecting a fairly pronounced slowdown in the expansion.
On Tuesday, traders will track the S&P Case-Shiller and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) house price indices for October, as well as the Richmond Fed manufacturing index for December. Wednesday will be marked by the international goods trade balance, home sales promises, the State Street Investor Confidence Index and the Department of Energy’s weekly report on domestic oil stocks. On Thursday, investors will be able to follow the weekly jobless claims and the Chicago PMI index.
Wall Street still optimistic about the Omicron variant
The markets are closely following the news related to the health crisis, although they do not seem to be overly concerned about the Omicron wave for the moment. Despite the surge in the number of Omicron cases around the world, hospitalizations and deaths linked to the coronavirus have increased only slightly in the most affected countries, notably South Africa and the United Kingdom. Many European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and France have however taken new braking measures in recent days against this highly transmissible variant.
For now, markets believe that the negative effect of these measures will be small on growth, based on English and South African studies indicating a lower virulence of Omicron, despite the surge in numbers. of cases.
Thus, in the United States, new Covid-19 infections exceeded 197,000 on Christmas Eve and increased by 65% in the last two weeks, although hospitalizations only increased by 10% in comparison and remain well short of previous waves, noted the ‘New York Times’. These figures also support the thesis of an Omicron variant which is certainly extremely contagious, but less virulent than its sad predecessors.
Dr Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s senior health adviser, nevertheless warned of the very large volume of new infections, despite the apparently mild symptoms of the new variant. He suggests that the wave of infections will increase, before subsiding in 2022. In the meantime, he warns of the risk of “complacency” in the face of the new variant.
VALUES TO FOLLOW
Pfizer (+ 1%) remains under surveillance. South Korea has just urgently approved the antiviral treatment against covid from the American laboratory, already validated a few days ago by the FDA.
Merck & Co (+ 1%). A Japanese health ministry commission recommended approving the American’s Covid-19 antiviral pill, also recently accepted by the US Food & Drug Administration.
Baidu (-0.6%). The Chinese internet giant’s joint venture with automaker Geely is said to begin mass production of its first robot electric vehicles as early as 2023.
GoDaddy (+ 8%) is soaring on Wall Street, as activist investor Starboard Value acquired a 6.5% stake in the Internet service provider’s capital for an amount close to $ 800 million. Starboard considers GoDaddy stock to be undervalued, and sees it as an attractive investment opportunity. According to the Wall Street Journal, Starboard plans to push the company to improve its performance. Arizona-based GoDaddy has seen a surge in online traffic as many businesses have turned to digital operations due to the pandemic.
Microsoft (+ 2%) will not physically participate in the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, swelling the list of firms preferring not to make the trip due to the pandemic. Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest Where Meta also passed their turns.
Apple (+ 2%). The Dutch competition agency ruled that the Cupertino group had violated antitrust rules, and ordered it to change the payment policies of the App Store.
FactSet (+ 0.9%), a global provider of integrated financial information and analytical applications, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire CUSIP Global Services (CGS) from S&P Global for $ 1.925 billion. dollars in cash. FactSet also expects to receive an estimated tax benefit of around $ 200 million as part of the transaction. The acquisition will significantly expand FactSet’s critical role in global financial markets, advancing its open data strategy.