(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street on Friday lined up a ninth session of increases in a series of 10 and a second positive week… but what must be remembered is that the US indices have already returned to their levels of last September 14/15, that is to say at the same point as eight weeks ago and well before the publication of the first quarterlies.
Operators seemed to have already turned the page on the rather ‘hawkish’ comments made on Thursday by Jerome Powell, who explicitly questioned the effectiveness of the measures taken to bring inflation back towards its 2% target, which had increased the anticipations
of a new turn of the screw by the Fed in December.
The S&P500, which had lost 0.8% on Thursday (wiping out the three previous sessions of increases), recovered almost twice as much on Friday (+1.56% to 4,415)… with 90% of values up, which spoke volumes about investors’ appetite for all-out actions.
The Dow Jones rose +1.15% to 34,283 and the Nasdaq Composite, almost double with +2.05% to 13,798. The Russell-2000, however, underperformed once again with only +1.07% to 1,705.
The Nasdaq-100 returned to 15,500 (+2.6% weekly and +42% annually) in the wake of semiconductors in full euphoria… and the ‘fantastic 7’ did well at the end of the year. image of Nvidia +3%, Meta +2.6% and Microsoft +2.5%.
Only one sector remained down this Friday, that of ‘utilities’ with only +0.3%. ‘WTI’ oil recovered +2.2% on Friday (but lost 4.5% over the past week), which allowed a technical rebound in Devon +3.3%, Marathon and Valero +2.3% .
The only macroeconomic indicator of the session was literally ignored: American consumer confidence deteriorated for the fourth consecutive month, from 63.8 to 60.4 in November, according to the monthly survey from the University of Michigan.
In another area, a CNBC survey of households revealed that 57% of them think that the Fed’s next move would be a rate hike compared to 43% betting on a reduction (compared to 80% on the decline for professionals of the Wall Street).
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