(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street took its revenge this Wednesday, and in a good way: buyers regained control after a ‘failed’ end of the session the day before when the US indices had lost between -0.5 and -0 .6% in the last hour.
A hitch in the upward momentum whose causes have not really been elucidated, due to a lack of notable ‘market movers’ (figures or announcements from central bankers on Tuesday).
The 3 main indices are once again able to break absolute records this Thursday to close in style a 1st quarter entirely marked by a funicular rise with the exception of the first week of the year.
What follows is a series of 10 weeks of increases out of 12 (the 2 ‘missing’ ones resulting in a horizontal consolidation, the gains of the previous week never being compromised).
Wall Street offered us a 22-week cycle of progression, with gains of +25 to +28% over 5 months, including a gain of +12% since January 5.
The Dow Jones index for once outperformed the ‘tech’ and the S&P’ with a jump of 1.22% to 39,760 Points, and it only missed 0.05% to surpass its closing record of March 21 (39,781) and the target of 40,000Pt is entirely possible for this Thursday at 9 p.m., the last session of the quarter (with a modest gain of +0.6%).
The Nasdaq came within 2 points (0.015%) of its last peak, gaining 0.5% to 16,399.
The S&P 500 set a 21st closing record following an increase of 0.86%, at 5,248.5 points: the absolute zenith being 5,261 (it was recorded a week ago), beat it Thursday evening – on the eve of a 3-day weekend on Wall Street – again seems to be a simple formality.
This would make a 22nd annual record to crown the 22nd week of increase, the scenario would be close to perfection… if valuations were not so tense: ‘most of the performance of the stock markets since the start of the year, and even over the last 18 months, is due to the expansion of valuation multiples’, underline the JPMorgan teams.
The S&P500 was propelled to new highs on March 27 by Marvell +5.9%, Intel +4.2%, On Semiconductors +3.7%, NXP +2.7%, Apple +2.1% , Tesla +1.2%, AMD +1%.
The broad index was also supported by nice gains on regional banks in a context of slight easing of US long rates (Boston Property +5.1%, Zions Bancorp +4.8%, Regions Financial +4%, Keycorp +3.9%, Bank of America +2%.
Note the -2.5% pullback on Nvidia which nevertheless preserves the $900.
Investors now seem to be waiting for new signs of good health in the American economy and confirmation of the decline in inflation to continue the upward movement underway since mid-autumn.
With this in mind, the markets will focus their attention on Friday on the statistics of American household income and spending, which will be accompanied by the ‘PCE’ component of prices, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation.
In the meantime, the ‘macro’ news consisted of data published by the American Energy Information Administration (EIA): crude oil stocks in the United States amounted to 448.2 million barrels during of the week of March 18 reporting an increase of 3.2 million barrels compared to the previous week’s level.
In detail, stocks of distilled products – including domestic fuel oil – fell by 1.2 million barrels, while gasoline stocks increased by 1.3 million barrels, still compared to the previous week. continues the agency.
Finally, the EIA specifies that refineries operated at 88.7% of their operational capacity during the same week, with an average production of 9.2 million barrels/day.
On the bond front, the session turned out to be favorable for T-Bonds with -5Pts at 4.180%, it was the same for oil since the barrel of ‘WTI’ gained +0.1% to $81.7, as well as the ‘Brent’ ($86.1 in London).
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