The floor of the New York Stock Exchange (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/SPENCER PLATT)
Wall Street started the last session of the week down on Friday, particularly worried about geopolitical tensions as banks launched the quarterly results season.
The Dow Jones index dropped 0.74%, the technology-dominated Nasdaq lost 0.87% and the S&P 500 lost 0.74% around 2:20 p.m. GMT.
Bond rates, which had risen to their highest since November for ten-year bonds – climbing to 4.58% – fell to 4.49%.
“It’s a good thing for stocks,” hoped Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com. But “there is geopolitical anxiety brewing, amid press reports, suggesting that Iran could soon launch an attack on Israel,” the analyst added.
He noted that these geopolitical concerns which “trigger a certain risk aversion” were corroborated by the jump in the price of crude oil. The barrel of American WTI rose by more than 2%.
Added to this are macroeconomic concerns with China’s poor trade figures which show a clear decline, over twelve months, in both exports (-7.5%) and imports (-1.9%).
The banks opened the results season with a bang. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup all reported better-than-expected first-quarter results but investor response was mixed.
JPMorgan lost 3.83% even though the bank’s profits rose 6% over the first three of the year. His boss Jamie Dimon warned of the pressures that inflation puts, exerting a “compression of margins”.
“Looking ahead, we remain on alert in the face of a significant number of uncertain forces,” he warned, citing in particular “a large number of persistent inflationary pressures, which could continue”.
Citigroup (+0.03%) published results lower than those of last year at the same time, down 27% over twelve months, but they remained higher than analysts’ forecasts.
Asset manager BlackRock saw the volume of assets under its control increase to $10.5 trillion (+15% over one year).
Despite a turnover of 4.73 billion dollars (+11.55% over one year) and a net profit of 1.57 billion (+35.3%), better than analysts’ consensus expectations, the stock was shunned by investors (-1.24%).
Wells Fargo Bank lost 0.20% after announcing a profit down 7% over one year to $4.6 billion, despite everything being higher than expectations. Turnover stood at $20.8 billion, a slight increase of 0.6%.
On the macro-economic front, the American import price index confirmed the tenacity of inflation: it climbed 0.4% over the month, the third monthly increase in a row.
Elsewhere, shares of semiconductor makers were lower as China’s efforts to break away from dependence on U.S. chipmakers intensified. Intel lost 3.60%, AMD -3.81% and Nvidia 1.65%.
Tesla lost 1% while the electric vehicle manufacturer was the subject of a price war, with its competitor Ford offering a $1,500 discount on its vehicles if these customers abandon their Tesla.
© 2024 AFP
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