(CercleFinance.com) – Wall Street moved without much direction on Friday, hesitating on the path to follow at the end of a trying week, marked both by a return of geopolitical risk and by an increasingly less accommodating tone of the Fed’s share of its future rate cuts.
A little over an hour after the opening, the Dow Jones advanced 0.4% to 37,918.2 points, while the Nasdaq lost more than 1% to 15,435.7 points.
Over the week as a whole, the Dow is currently limiting its decline to 0.2%, but the heavily technology-weighted index is heading towards a weekly loss of more than 4%, its fourth in a row.
“This would be a first since December 2022 and it would truly mark a turnaround after the bullish rally which pushed the American stock markets between last November and the end of March,” underlines a trader.
Technology stocks are particularly affected by profit-taking in the face of rising bond yields, following the Fed’s increasingly cautious approach regarding its upcoming monetary easing cycle.
The serenity that had returned to the bond market resulted in a further deterioration this morning, with the yield on ten-year US Treasury bonds rising to 4.63%, its highest level since November.
However, the speakers reacted little or nothing to the announcement of Israeli air strikes against Iran, a response that Tehran tried to minimize on Friday.
A sign of the moderate reaction of the markets, oil prices are stabilizing after reaching six-month highs last night, with American light crude (WTI) currently gaining 0.5% to more than 83 dollars.
The VIX volatility index nevertheless increases by 3%, beyond 18 points, while the dollar, a traditional refuge in the event of geopolitical tensions, crumbles by 0.2% towards 1.0670 against the euro. .
Gold is taking full advantage of its status as a safe haven asset, continuing to move not far from its historic highs at more than $2,400 per ounce.
On the value side, Netflix lost almost 8% after revealing forecasts last night considered disappointing and announcing its decision to no longer communicate its new subscriber figures, raising fears of a slowdown in the growth of its activity.
On the Dow, the results of American Express were greeted by a gain of 4.5%, but those of P&G were punished by a drop of 1%, proof of the mixed nature of the start of this results season.
Tesla fell 0.2% following the recall of nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks due to a pedal locking problem likely to cause the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally.
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