(New York) The New York Stock Exchange is moving down on Friday shortly after the opening, in very tight margins and in a waiting position before the publications of several technological giants next week.
Around 10:05 am (Eastern time), the Dow Jones yielded 0.08%, the NASDAQ index returned 0.48% and the broader S&P 500 index 0.21%.
“There has not been much conviction in buying or selling” since the start of the week, despite an avalanche of company results and a new burst of macroeconomic indicators, commented, in a note, Patrick O’Hare, from Briefing.com.
“Trading this week was marked by hesitation, before the publications, next week, of giant capitalizations which have allowed the indices to rise since the start of the year,” added the analyst.
Microsoft and Alphabet are thus expected on Tuesday, Meta on Wednesday and Amazon on Thursday, whose prices have all resisted, since the beginning of the year, the continuation of the monetary tightening in progress as well as the banking crisis.
For Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial, Wall Street is focused on corporate margins, which she fears will shrink.
“During a recession, margins erode, which pushes companies to reduce their costs, to invest less, but above all, to lay off workers”, which further deteriorates the economic situation, she explains.
On Thursday, Tesla was harshly penalized after reporting a drop in its margins, linked to price cuts in recent months to counter competition and lower consumer appetite.
On Friday, the electric vehicle maker raised its prices on the S and X models in the United States. The Tesla title benefited, but moderately (+0.23%).
For Quincy Krosby, the fact that the New York Stock Exchange has changed little for several weeks is a sign of “resilience”, which encourages optimism. “The stock market seems to be digesting all this well, with the feeling that it will come out of it,” she said.
Like equities, the bond market was calmer, even if rates tightened slightly. The yield on 10-year US government bonds rose to 3.56% from 3.53% the day before closing.
Elsewhere on the stock exchange, the New York market hailed the results, which exceeded expectations, of the giant of care and hygiene products Procter and Gamble (+3.95%), which raised its sales forecasts throughout its staggered financial year (which will end at the end of June).
The Cincinnati (Ohio) group managed to raise its prices in all segments of its business, which compensated for a stagnation or even a drop in sales volume.
After having unscrewed by almost 20% on Thursday following the announcement of the closure of the information site BuzzFeed News, BuzzFeed remained poorly oriented (-2.65%).
The rail freight operator CSX was sought (+ 2.30%) after presenting, Thursday after the stock market, better than expected results. The Jacksonville (Florida) company says it has essentially solved the labor shortage that has handicapped it since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The oil services group SLB, formerly Schlumberger (-3.25%), fell despite results above expectations and optimistic comments from CEO Olivier Le Peuch for the second half of 2023.
As for the mining group Freeport McMoRan, it also fell back (-3.70%), after recording a sharp drop in its turnover and its profit, attributed mainly to weather problems which slowed its activity.