(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street should continue its rebound on Friday morning, still buoyed by hopes surrounding a possible move by the Fed given the very gloomy geopolitical context of the moment.
Half an hour before the opening, the futures contract on the main New York indices advanced by an average of 0.5%, signaling a fragile rise at the start of the session.
Despite the Russian offensive in Ukraine, US equity markets managed to close higher last night, mainly thanks to cheap buybacks on technology stocks.
But a growing number of economists also raise the possibility of an initiative by the Federal Reserve which would make it possible to attenuate the consequences of the war on the markets.
‘A slower tightening cycle could be an option for central banks’, experts at NN Investment Partners said this morning.
These expectations were fueled by statistics showing that US household consumption is not suffering from the rise in inflation, which seems to rule out the need for excessive rate hikes.
Consumer spending thus increased by 2.1% in January compared to the previous month, while analysts were only anticipating an increase of 1.6%.
Investors will be watching closely Michigan consumer confidence, expected in the morning, to ease fears over spending and inflation.
A sign of a certain relaxation, oil prices are falling despite the concerns posed by the Ukrainian conflict on the supply of crude.
The US light crude contract (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) fell 0.7% to 92.2 dollars a barrel, while Brent fell 2.1% to drop below the 100 dollar threshold.
Very followed in recent days, the CBOE’s VIX volatility index – also known as Wall Street’s ‘fear index’ – fell for its part by nearly 3% to break the threshold of 30 points, to 29.5 .
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