(New York) The expectation of the meeting of the American central bank (Fed) and the publication of results of major companies caused investors to be cautious on Monday and left the stock markets without direction, while European gas again flamed.
Updated yesterday at 5:10 p.m.
European markets spent most of the session slightly up. At the close, Paris took 0.33%, London 0.41% and Milan 0.80%. Frankfurt ended down 0.33%, disturbed at the end of the day by the announcement by Gazprom of a further drop in its deliveries of Russian gas to Europe.
On the New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ fell 0.43% at the start of a week that will be marked by the results of several American tech companies. The S&P 500 gained 0.13% and the Dow Jones 0.28%.
“Results not as bad as feared, the Fed which only increases (its key rates, Ed) by 75 basis points and China which puts in place a plan in the hope of avoiding the next wave of the real estate crisis are among the reasons put forward to explain” the small rise in certain stock market indices, estimated Craig Erlam, an analyst at Oanda.
The fight against inflation will again be at the center of Tuesday and Wednesday’s meeting of the Federal Reserve (Fed). But finding the right balance will be a high-flying exercise: not doing enough would mean letting inflation spiral out of control, and acting too hard could bring the US economy to a halt.
“For now, the Fed wants to be aggressive in fighting inflation and when price developments are under control, the central bank will look a little more at the impact of its monetary policy on the American economy” , analyzed Florian Allain, manager at Mandarine Gestion.
For Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital, the anticipated 75 basis point rise in overnight rates by the Fed “is already priced in by the markets”, but according to him, “it is the results of companies that will set the tone for the Stock Exchange for the rest of the summer”.
In terms of results, the week promises to be intense with no less than 175 S&P 500 companies publishing their accounts. Tuesday are expected in particular General Electric, Coca-Cola, Alphabet (Google) or Microsoft.
“This week could be the most important of the year and many other factors will have to be watched”, in particular the “outlook which could be disappointing”, underlines Vincent Boy, analyst of IG France.
The gas is blazing again
The price of European benchmark natural gas, the Dutch TTF, gained more than 8% to 176.45 euros per megawatt hour, after Gazprom announced a reduction from Wednesday in its deliveries to Europe, which will correspond to around 20% of the capacity of the Nord Stream gas pipeline against some 40% currently.
Russia advances the absence of a turbine and the need for maintenance of another to justify these disturbances, but for Berlin, it is a “political” decision. The German Ministry of the Economy assured that there was “no technical reason” to proceed with the new reductions in the delivery of Russian gas.
This context and the entry into its capital of the German state continued to weigh down the action of the energy group Uniper, which lost 12.39% on Monday.
While a gas shortage would hurt the European economy, the euro was stable (+0.09%) at 1.0222 dollars shortly before 9 p.m. GMT.
Perilous orbiting for Eutelsat?
French satellite operator Eutelsat is in talks to merge with Britain’s OneWeb, a move intended to create a giant in the race to access the internet from space.
The shareholders of the two groups should each hold half of the future entity in the long term. Eutelsat shares fell 17.83%.
On the side of oil and bitcoin
Oil prices ended in the green.
A barrel of Brent North Sea crude for September delivery gained 1.88% to $105.15.
A barrel of US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for same-month delivery rose 2.11% to $96.70.
Bitcoin fell 2.30% to $22,201.