(CercleFinance.com) – The month of September started on an undecided note on Wall Street, but green prevailed over equities, despite a sharp deterioration in bonds (+10 basis points on the ’10-year’ rate towards 4.195 %) which has been largely ignored.
Green for the Dow Jones (+0.33% and +1.5% weekly) and the S&P 500 which gained 0.18% (+1.9% weekly) at the end of its 5th rising session on 6.
The Nasdaq (-0.02%) failed in extremis to register a 6th session of consecutive increase but gains +2.4% in weekly.
The Nasdaq-100 crumbled by -0.07% but gained +2.9% over the past week, and returned to 2% of its annual record of 15,900.
Intel was the locomotive of the ‘technos’ with +4.2% and the Nasdaq closed in the red first due to -5% from Tesla and -5.5% from Broadcom, which unveiled disappointing prospects for the end 2023.
The highlight of the week was the publication of the ‘NFP’ and on the spot, Wall Street reacted well, suggesting good gains in the morning (+0.5 to +0.7%). .. but the rise in oil prices and the resulting tension in rates dampened buyers’ enthusiasm on the eve of a 3-day weekend.
According to the ‘NFP’, the US economy generated 187,000 non-farm payrolls in August, according to the Labor Department, a number slightly higher than expected (+157,000).
But job creations for the previous two months were revised down sharply, from 185,000 to 105,000 for June and from 187,000 to 157,000 for July, ie a total revision balance of -110,000 for these two months.
The unemployment rate also increased by 0.3 points to 3.8% (with the arrival of the seasonal contingent of new graduates looking for work) and the active population (labor force participation rate) rose by 0.2 points to 62.8%.
The average hourly income grew at an annual rate of 4.3%, a rate slightly higher than ‘gross’ inflation (but this will not last given the coming increase in fuel prices).
Activity in the US manufacturing sector contracted at an accelerated pace in August, according to S&P Global, whose PMI for the sector stood at 47.9 for the past month, down from 49.0 in July. .
S&P Global explains that a faster decline in new orders led to a drop in production, while employment saw its weakest increase since January and inflationary pressures remained modest, albeit slightly up.
The manufacturing ISM published a few minutes later also showed a contraction.
The ‘fact’ of the day was above all the rise in the price of oil, which took up +2.8% to $86 on the NYMEX (summer resistance of $85 largely exceeded), the highest since the beginning of November 2022: this is not not good for inflation, hence the pressure on US rates.
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