PARIS (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange moved in mixed order on Friday in early trading after the launch of corporate results by several major U.S. banks and the surprise drop in retail sales last month.
A few minutes after opening, the Dow Jones index lost 0.72% to 35,853.25 points and the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.26% to 4,646.65 points.
The Nasdaq Composite gained 0.16% to 14,830.737.
JPMorgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo kicked off the fourth quarter corporate earnings season before the opening.
If the publication of Wells Fargo is welcomed by the market (+2.98%), those of Citi and JPMorgan are sanctioned.
The latter lost 4.94% after reporting weakness in its trading activity while Citigroup dropped 1.58% after publishing a drop in its quarterly profit due to higher expenses and disappointing performance of its activity. Retail.
“The market sentiment is quite negative, although today officially marks the start of the quarterly release period…it looks like inflation continues to be the overriding concern,” said Sam Stovall, chief executive. investment strategy at CFRA Research.
Several officials of the American central bank have succeeded in recent days to express the need for a tightening of monetary policy in the face of the rise in consumer prices, which reached 7% in 2021.
The major American technology groups such as Apple (+0.14%), Amazon (+0.47%), Tesla (+0.37%) and Meta (+0.07%) are rising timidly after falling sharply during the previous session on the prospect of several Fed rate hikes this year.
In macroeconomics, U.S. retail sales suffered their biggest drop in a decade in December as shortages and the new wave of coronavirus infections hit, which could temper expectations of a strong acceleration of the country’s economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Manufacturing production also recorded a surprise drop in December, -0.1% against an expected increase of 0.3%, due to a drop in automobile production and a global shortage of semiconductors.
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(Laetitia Volga, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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