Wall Street closes higher

(New York) The New York Stock Exchange ended sharply higher on Friday, finally satisfied with the American employment report after being initially frightened, choosing to retain wage moderation rather than massive job creations.

The Dow Jones rose 0.87%, the NASDAQ index gained 1.60% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 1.18%.

The trajectory of the session was dictated by the monthly report from the US Department of Labor, which reported 336,000 job creations in September, almost double the 170,000 anticipated by economists.

In addition, the Labor Department revised upwards the data from the previous two months, adding 119,000 net creations.

“This will put even more pressure on the Fed [banque centrale américaine] to raise its rates” at its next meeting, commented Chris Zaccarelli, of Independent Advisor Alliance.

Operators now attribute a probability of more than 40% to the hypothesis of a further increase by the end of the year.

In the process, bond rates were once again propelled skyward.

The yield on 10-year US government bonds set a new 16-year high at 4.8852%. Its thirty-year equivalent also went higher than it had since 2007, at 5.05%.

The stock market indices opened conspicuously in the red, before the market turned around, against all expectations, on both stocks and bonds.

Operators “peeled the onion” from the employment report, to dissect it and find elements other than the main figure, explained Sam Stovall, of CFRA.

They saw that the progression of the average salary had slowed in September, to 4.2% over one year against 4.3% the previous month, below expectations.

“Investors concluded that the scenario of a soft landing [de l’économie américaine]with a deceleration in inflation, was still credible”, which encouraged them to be optimistic and buy, according to Sam Stovall.

The giant capitalizations of Wall Street, all from the technology sector, took out the mainsail with, in the lead, Microsoft (+2.47%) and Meta (+3.49%).

The appetite for risk was back, benefiting cryptocurrencies and companies in the sector, such as the exchange platform Coinbase (+5.15%) or the specialist in “mining” (creation of digital currencies) Marathon Digital (+ 8.89%).

The movement also benefited stocks that have been battered in recent weeks, notably Disney (+2.64%), which fell on Wednesday to its lowest level in nine years.

Elsewhere on the stock market, Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the shale oil giants in the United States, surged (+10.45%) following information from the Wall Street Journal reporting a possible takeover by ExxonMobil (-1.67%), for around $60 billion. The group’s market capitalization is around $50 billion.

The operation would give ExxonMobil a new foothold in the Permian Basin, an immense oil-rich region that covers west Texas and southeast New Mexico.

The cinema operator AMC benefited from the general climate (+11.57%), but also from pre-sales of the film Taylor Swift – The Eras Tourwhich exceeded $100 million, unheard of for a concert feature film.

Jeans legend Levi Strauss was punished (-0.83%) after having once again lowered, Thursday after the market, its annual turnover forecasts, now between stability and growth of 1% over one year.

The Amgen laboratory gained 0.90% after announcing the finalization of its acquisition of the pharmaceutical company Horizon Therapeutics, for approximately $27.8 billion.