(New York) The New York Stock Exchange closed slightly lower on Tuesday, in a cautious and very thin August market, pending the intervention of the President of the American Central Bank on Friday, who could clarify whether the The Fed intends to continue to have a heavy hand on interest rates.
Updated yesterday at 6:01 p.m.
According to final results, the Dow Jones fell 0.47% to 32,909.59 points, the NASDAQ index was flat at 12,381.30 points and the broader S&P 500 index fell 0.22% to 4128.73. points.
“Investors are cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve (Fed) central bank forum in Jackson Hole,” Wells Fargo analysts said of the highly anticipated annual central bankers’ symposium that begins Thursday in the Wyoming mountain resort. .
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech on Friday will be in the spotlight, with market participants widely expecting his comments to be hawkish, reiterating the need for further interest rate hikes to curb the crisis. ‘inflation,’ they added.
Same anticipation for Jack Ablin, director of investments at Cresset Capital: “Everyone is focused on Friday’s speech. »
“Investors are preparing to hear tough words from the Fed boss,” added the specialist for AFP.
“Federal funds futures are pricing in higher rates and even a member of the Fed, who normally sided more with the doves (less favorable to tight monetary policy), like Neel Kashkari recently, indicated that the rates would go further than the market expects,” said Albin.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro continued to evolve below parity against the dollar, at its lowest in 20 years, at 0.9967 dollars for one euro around 8:10 p.m. GMT.
As for the bond market, he saw the rates on ten-year US Treasury bonds tend to 3.05%.
Real estate suffers
Among macroeconomic data, sales of new homes in the United States in July plunged again for the sixth month in a row, raising fears that a bad patch is setting in for the real estate market in this context of higher mortgage prices. .
They fell to their lowest since 2016, falling 12.6% compared to June and almost 30% year on year. “The housing market is in worse shape than the Fed would like to believe,” commented Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Four out of eleven S&P sectors remained in the green, led by energy (+3.62%), while crude prices ended up sharply.
Real estate (-1.45%), health services (-1.39%) and communication services (-0.71%) lagged behind.
Twitter stock plunged 7.32% to $39.86 as its ex-security chief accused the social network of covering up vulnerabilities in its protection system and lying about its fight against fake accounts . These adventures could bring water to the mill of Elon Musk in his legal dispute over his abortive takeover of Twitter. His Tesla Group gained 2.26% to $889.36.
The department store chain Macy’s advanced 3.73% despite lowering its sales and profit projections for the year. The brand announced better than expected quarterly results, excluding too many stocks through a series of promotions.
Competing chains like Kohl (+2.09%), Nordstrom (+1.04%) took advantage of the momentum.
Zoom, the video conferencing specialist, fell 16.54% to $81.32 as its second-quarter results fell short of expectations and the company lowered its full-year revenue projections.
Zoom, which is valued on the stock market at $24 billion, now expects annual revenue of around $4.40 billion instead of $4.55 billion previously for its staggered 2023 fiscal year.
Toronto Stock Exchange
Gains in the energy and base metals sectors helped push the Toronto Stock Exchange higher on Tuesday, offsetting the negative impact of Scotiabank’s third-quarter financial results that were worse than expected.
The Toronto floor’s S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 3.02% at the end of the day, and gained 10.43 points to 19,985.35 points.
In the currency market, the Canadian dollar traded at 77.09 US cents, down from its average rate of 76.72 US cents the previous day.
However, the Toronto index as a whole lost many of its morning gains throughout the day, in part due to the performance of Scotiabank, which lost 5.25% of its stock value. Tuesday when it releases its third-quarter results.
While Scotiabank reported net income of $2.59 billion for the quarter ending July 31, up from $2.54 billion in the same quarter last year, its adjusted profit of $2.10 per stock is below analysts’ expectations of $2.11.
The Global Wealth Management and Global Banking and Markets divisions saw their revenues fall, by 14% and 26% respectively.
“(Scotiabank) is almost single-handedly driving the market down,” Petursson said. And it’s dragging some of the other banks with it, fearing that some of the weakness we see in Scotiabank could also emerge from some of the other banks. »