PARIS (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange opened in scattered order on Friday, with distribution stocks in focus on this “Black Friday”, which marks the start of the end-of-year buying period.
Closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, Wall Street resumes only for half a day and will close at 6:00 p.m. GMT.
In early trading, the Dow Jones index gained 64.2 points, or 0.19%, to 34,258.26 points and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.02% to 4,026.31 points.
The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.44%, or 50.091 points, to 11,235.226.
The latter finds itself penalized by Apple’s 2.04% drop following reports that iPhone production at Foxconn’s factory in Zhengzhou, China, could fall by at least 30% in November. .
The distribution sector is particularly watched with the various commercial operations set up for “Cyber Week” and “Black Friday”.
Faced with inflation, resellers, such as Target (-0.49%) or Macy’s (+0.58%), are multiplying promotional offers at the end of the year in an attempt to attract customers, which does not is not without risk for their margins.
“It’s a very competitive environment for retail…Margins will be squeezed and earnings lower. The big question will be the outlook for next year,” said Rick Meckler at Cherry Lane Investments.
Americans spent Thursday, on the occasion of Thanksgiving, 5.29 billion dollars (5.1 billion euros), a record amount, up 2.9% year on year, according to published data by Adobe Digital Index.
(Ankika Biswas and Shubham Batra, French version Laetitia Volga, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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