Wall Street ends without direction, sixth straight record for NASDAQ

(New York) The major indices on the New York Stock Exchange ended in opposite directions on Tuesday, with the market showing signs of running out of steam but refusing to give up ground.



The NASDAQ and S&P 500 indices gained 0.14% and 0.07% respectively, both ending at new closing records – the sixth in a row for the NASDAQ – while the Dow Jones lost 0.13%.

“The market has been stretched so thin” by this string of records, notes Tom Cahill of Ventura Wealth Management, “it’s running out of steam.”

But while everything indicates that it is ripe for consolidation, or even a correction, the New York market continues to progress inexorably.

As has often been the case in recent months, the NASDAQ relied on a few technology stocks, led by microprocessor giant Nvidia (+2.48%), followed by Intel (+1.77%) and Micron (+0.34%).

The S&P 500, in addition to tech, was driven by several financials, notably banks Citigroup (+2.80%), JPMorgan Chase (+1.20%) and Wells Fargo (+1.47%), all three of which are publishing their quarterly results on Friday.

On the macroeconomic side, operators are waiting for the CPI consumer price index on Thursday, which will provide information on the trajectory of inflation.

“The market has already priced in so much good news that any negative element” on the macro or microeconomic levels “could send it back down more than it should, because it has gone so high, so fast,” warns Tom Cahill.

On Tuesday, during a hearing before a US Senate committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated that the institution was now more vigilant about the deterioration in the jobs market.

“We are aware that the risks are now on both sides,” namely a rise in inflation but also a decline in employment, the central banker conceded.

Still, “no one expects the Fed to change its rate at their next meeting,” on July 30-31, Cahill warned. “I expect instead that they will signal that a cut is imminent.”

Operators give a 73% probability to a first cut at the meeting on September 17 and 18.

On the bond market, the yield on ten-year US government bonds rose slightly, to 4.29% compared to 4.27% the previous day at the close.

On the stock market, the Eli Lilly laboratory reached a new historic peak (+1.58%), driven in particular by a study, published on Monday, according to which its treatment against obesity Mounjaro allowed greater weight loss than the star drug of this market, Ozempic from the Danish Novo Nordisk.

Paramount Global recovered (+3.13%), but the stock was still trading quite far ($11.53) from the $15 that investors in studio Skydance Media plan to offer in their bid for the media group.

Tesla experienced its tenth consecutive session of growth (+3.71%), with investors betting on the beneficial effects for the stock of the presentation, on August 8, of the automobile brand’s “robotaxi”.

Boeing (-1.40%) delivered more planes in June (44) than it had done in each of the first five months of the year, but investors mainly noted that the number of aircraft delivered to its customers was down more than 30% year-on-year in the second quarter.

Oracle fell (-3.00%) after The Information reported that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI had ended talks with the cloud computing specialist over a $10 billion deal.

Toronto Stock Exchange

Canada’s main stock index fell Tuesday, weighed down by losses in the industrial and energy sectors, while Wall Street closed mixed.

The S&P/TSX composite index lost 83.63 points to 22,042.50.

The Canadian dollar was trading at 73.32 cents US, compared with 73.35 cents US on Monday.

Crude oil fell 92 US cents to $81.41 per barrel and natural gas fell two US cents to $2.34 per million BTU.

Gold rose $4.40 to $2,367.90 an ounce and copper was down four cents to $4.58 a pound.

The Canadian Press


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