(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange does not seem about to come to a halt on Monday after the start of the year with a bang last week.
Half an hour before the opening, the ‘futures’ contracts on the major New York indices rose from 0.3% to 0.6%, announcing a start to the session in the green.
Breaking with their 2022 momentum, US equity markets had all ended the past week with weekly gains above 1%, as investor optimism was fueled by statistics deemed reassuring.
“Fed officials may have been encouraged by the latest jobs report and slowing average hourly wage growth,” said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer of UBS’s wealth management arm. .
‘The 3.5% salary increase seems to be a figure compatible with the inflation target of 2% established by the Fed and things now seem to be moving in this direction’, he underlines.
Investors say to themselves that the inflation figures, which will be published on Friday, could well confirm their idea of a more accommodating monetary policy from 2023.
Economists hope for a further slowdown in inflation in the United States, which had reached 7.1% in November, its lowest level in almost a year.
Investors know that the next few weeks will be decisive since the first month of the year generally sets the general trend on the equity markets.
According to calculations by S&P Dow Jones Indices, when the S&P 500 index rises in January, it is up over the full year in more than 71% of cases.
Another meeting to follow, the big banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo will kick off the quarterly results season on Friday.
The profits of financial groups listed on the S&P 500 are expected to fall by 15.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to estimates from FactSet.
As for the S&P companies as a whole, FactSet predicts a 4.1% decline in their results over the last three months of the year.
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