The floor of the New York Stock Exchange (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/SPENCER PLATT)
The New York Stock Exchange ended higher on Friday, emboldened by the vision of a softening job market and less bad results than expected from Apple.
The Dow Jones rose 1.18%, the Nasdaq index climbed 1.99% and the S&P 500 index gained 1.26%.
The New York market was impatiently awaiting the monthly employment report, which showed 175,000 job creations in April, significantly below the 240,000 announced by economists.
The publication also revealed that the average salary had increased by only 0.2% over one month, compared to 0.3% expected. Over one year, revenues increased by 3.9%, their lowest rate since June 2021.
For Patrick O’Hare, of Briefing.com, this report, “neither hot nor chilling”, had everything to please. “The figures are good enough to show the market that the economy continues to grow”, but also sufficiently moderate “to reassure the president of the Fed (American central bank) in the idea that the next rate movement will not be a rise”.
The bond market welcomed this new data and the yield on 2-year US government bonds fell to 4.70%, a first in almost a month.
The positive effect of the report on employment was combined with that of Apple’s results (+5.98%), down but higher than analysts’ predictions. “It was less bad than expected,” commented Patrick O’Hare.
The Cupertino (California) group has managed to improve its profitability, in particular thanks to services (App Store, Apple Music, iCloud or Apple TV+), whose margins are very significant.
Not to spoil anything, the Apple firm announced a new share buyback plan, to the tune of $110 billion, the largest ever seen for a listed company.
Behind Apple’s rise, all the tech giants finished in the green, in particular Nvidia (+3.46%), Microsoft (+2.22%) and Meta (+2.33%).
On the Dow Jones side, Wall Street was also stimulated by the accounts of the Amgen laboratory (+11.82%), which raised the bottom of the range of its turnover and net profit forecasts for the 2024 financial year.
The group was notably driven by its anti-cholesterol Rapatha and its osteoporosis drug Evenity and reported positive results in the development of its obesity treatment MariTide.
This last element penalized its competitor Eli Lilly (-2.77%), which already markets Zepbound, another appetite regulator.
After rising above a major technical threshold, in this case the average of the last 50 trading sessions, the S&P 500 nevertheless fell slightly.
“We have seen the indices struggle to stay above this threshold recently,” recalled Patrick O’Hare. “Seeing him close higher would have been an encouraging sign.”
Investors did not see in the last two solid sessions at the end of the week the promise of a restart of the New York market.
“I think we are going to stay in this in-between,” warned Patrick O’Hare, with indices that evolve according to the indicators. “It’s not heaven, but it’s not hell either.”
On the stock market, the hotel platform Expedia stumbled (-15.25%), after having lowered its turnover forecast for its 2024 financial year, due to less dynamic reservations than projected, in particular for its subsidiary Vrbo.
Every day has its own episode in the saga of the Paramount Global media group (-7.00%). On Friday, several media reported that the controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, was not in favor of the takeover offer from the production company Skydance, nor the joint offer from Apollo Global Management and Sony.
© 2024 AFP
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