PARIS (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange opened higher on Friday and is heading for a positive weekly performance after the indicators deemed reassuring in recent days on inflation in the United States, which partly allay fears of a strong rate hike in September.
A few minutes after the start of trading, the Dow Jones index gained 165.14 points, or 0.5%, to 33,501.81, the Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 0.51% to 4,228.72 and the Nasdaq Composite took 0.48% to 12,841.59.
The S&P-500, the main reference for many American investors, is at this stage up 2% for the week as a whole, its fourth positive weekly performance in a row.
As for the Nasdaq, with an increase of 1.45% compared to its closing last Friday, it is evolving 21.5% above its low point of June 16.
While Federal Reserve officials and some investors have still not ruled out a further three-quarter point rate hike in September, the hypothesis of a hike limited to half a point is once again favored after the figures. below expectations for consumer and producer prices published over the past two days.
Import price statistics published an hour before the opening of Wall Street confirmed this trend with a drop of 1.4% in July, which brings their rise over one year to 8.8% after +10.7 % in June.
This development, which somewhat appeases concerns about rates, benefits, among other things, growth stocks such as Apple, which gained 0.74%, or Intel (+0.93%).
The best performance of the Dow Jones is for Wall Disney, still driven by its quarterly results: up 2.6%, the title brings its gains for the week to more than 12%.
Renewed risk appetite led investors to buy $7.1 billion worth of stocks in the week to August 10 according to weekly data from Bank of America, and U.S. growth stocks recorded their inflow of capital since December.
The start of the session will be animated by the publication at 2:00 p.m. GMT of the first estimate of the Michigan confidence index, expected to rise to 52.5 after 51.5 in June.
(Written by Marc Angrand)