(CercleFinance.com) – After a solid start, the New York Stock Exchange is more hesitant on Wednesday, the good results of several heavyweights being offset by a worrying statistics concerning employment.
At the end of the morning, the Dow Jones advanced by just 0.1% to 35,430.9 points, while the Nasdaq Composite still nibbled 0.4% to 14,401.8 points.
Reeling from the disruption caused by the spread of Omicron, the US private sector shed 301,000 jobs last month, particularly in leisure, hospitality and transportation.
This is the first decline in private employment in the United States since December 2020.
Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, notes, however, that this bout of weakness should only prove temporary.
Investors’ attention is also focused on a burst of quarterly results, often much better than expected.
Among the good surprises of the day, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, climbed 6% after reporting much better than expected quarterly performance and announcing a plan to split its nominal.
AMD, for its part, climbed 5.5% after announcing “solid” fourth quarter results accompanied by “exceptional” business prospects for the 2022 financial year.
On the industrials side, GM lost more than 2%, its lackluster results in the fourth quarter not being fully offset by its brighter outlook for 2022.
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