(CercleFinance.com) – The bullish trend is not ‘dead’ and Wall Street has resources: buyers rushed to ‘pay’ for the first ‘hiccup’ of the year 2024, and even the first higher decline -1.5% in a few hours observed since the end of October.
The US indices showed themselves to be resilient, initial gains (+0.3%) quickly tripled, then quadrupled mid-session, with the S&P500 (+1.4% to 5,222) returning to near its absolute records, at less than 0.7%. In the end, the index gained +1.1% to 5,204, the Dow Jones +0.8% to 38,904 and the Nasdaq Composite +1.25% to 16,248.
The slogan ‘buy all the dips’ still seemed relevant in New York and the ‘titans’ and semiconductor champions were picked up again with Meta +3.2%, Western Digital +3 .4%, Netflix +3.1%, Amazon and AMD +2.8%, Nvidia and Marvel Techno +2.5%, Microsoft +1.8%.
Still under pressure, Tesla fell by -3.6% with the rumor of the abandonment of the development of a ‘low cost’ car at $25,000 (a niche dominated by its main Chinese competitor BYD)… but shortly after At the close, the stock rose +2.5% with the mention of a new project: the ‘robotaxi’.
Highly anticipated, the monthly ‘NFP’ report recorded 303,000 non-agricultural jobs created last month in the United States, a level well above consensus, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.8%, compared to 3.9%. in February.
The increase in average hourly wages – a closely watched component – saw its progression slow slightly to 4.1% at an annual rate, compared to 4.3% the previous month, a point which has probably revived Wall Street’s optimism.
Investors thus only took 24 hours to digest the statements of Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Fed, who warned that ‘if inflation continued to follow successive sequences of declines then occasional bursts, the question would arise of to know whether we should not give up on any rate cut this year’.
If some strategists only see a slight slump within an underlying trend which remains bullish, others evoke a prelude to a correction which is now inevitable. ‘The strong start to the year signed by the stock markets increases the risk of renewed volatility in the short term,’ warned Larry Adam, at Raymond James.
The bond markets remain ‘heavy’ with T-Bonds returning to test the crucial resistance of 4.405%, the ‘2 year’ climbing towards 4.751% and the ’30 year’ towards 4.552%. With the crossing of 4.39%, the scenario of a return to 4.50% becomes more and more plausible.
Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and the decline in Russian refining capacity continue to maintain pressure on oil: a barrel of ‘Brent’ (+1.2%) set a new annual record at $91.6. The ‘geopolitical fact’ also continued to push gold upwards (+1%) beyond $2,330 (new zenith, or +4% weekly).
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