(New York) The New York Stock Exchange closed sharply lower on Thursday, with many investors making portfolio changes on the final day of an eventful quarter.
Updated yesterday at 5:06 p.m.
The Dow Jones fell 1.56%, the NASDAQ index, heavily influenced by technology stocks, fell 1.54%, and the broader S&P 500 index fell 1.57%.
The Toronto Stock Exchange closed lower on pessimism over the war in Ukraine and declining crude oil prices, but that didn’t stop it from having its all-March best. months since October.
The Toronto floor’s S&P/TSX Composite Index lost 185.80 points to end the session with 21,890.16 points.
In the currency market, the Canadian dollar traded at an average rate of 80.03 cents US, down from 80.19 cents US the previous day.
On the Commodities Exchange, crude oil prices fell US$7.54 to US$100.28 a barrel, while natural gas rose 3.7 cents to US$5.64 million BTUs.
The price of gold gained US$15.00 to US$1954.00 an ounce and that of copper was essentially flat at US$4.75 a pound.
“What had the most influence on the market was the fact that it was the last day of the quarter, during which there was a significant rotation from equities to bonds,” explained Karl Haeling, analyst at LBBW.
On Wednesday, JPMorgan analysts estimated the average weight of bonds in portfolios to be just 18%, the lowest since 2008.
“We have just experienced one of the worst quarters in history for bonds,” noted Karl Haeling, believing, like JPMorgan analysts, that the bond market could soon experience a rebound.
Thursday’s movement benefited a good part of the maturities on the bond market, from three months to 30 years, which fell from 2.47% to 2.44%. Bond prices move in the opposite direction to their rates.
According to analysts at Briefing.com, part of the investors took profits after more than two weeks of a wild ride.
Over the quarter, however, the S&P 500 lost 4.94% and the Dow Jones 4.56%.
In this context, President Joe Biden’s announcement of a withdrawal of 180 million barrels from American strategic reserves to relieve the black gold market had little effect.
The news caused the price of a barrel of WTI (West Texas Intermediate), the main American variety, to fall by nearly 7%, “but the impact on other markets was limited, because everyone knows that it is temporary”, raised Karl Haeling.
Also, “it doesn’t change the inflation forecast much,” he added.
On Thursday, the spread between the rate of inflation-protected bonds, known as TIPS, and that of conventional ten-year government bonds, which measures inflation expectations, thus contracted only very slightly and remains very high, the highest for almost a quarter of a century.
On the odds, only the oil companies have really suffered from Joe Biden’s announcement. ExxonMobil (-1.42%), Chevron (-1.60%) or ConocoPhillips (-1.09%) all lost ground.
Elsewhere, the semiconductor manufacturer AMD suffered (-8.29% to 109.34 dollars) from a lowering of recommendation from Barclays, which fears a slowdown in the sector. It dragged rivals Intel (-3.64%) and Micron (-1.60%) in its wake.
Against the tide, cruise passengers have stayed the course, still supported by a new opinion from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the main American health agency, which no longer recommends avoiding cruises to avoid contracting the coronavirus.
Carnival (+3.16%), Norwegian (+3.11%) and Royal Caribbean (+2.82%) all started the session in the green.
HP was sanctioned (-6.54% to 36.30 dollars), as well as Dell, after the lowering of the recommendation of Morgan Stanley, which foresees difficulties in the PC market due to the uncertainty on the economic situation. economic.
Pharmacy chain Walgreens failed to benefit (-5.67% to $44.77) from better-than-expected quarterly results, buoyed by COVID-19 vaccinations and testing, as investors worried about a possible slack in the coming quarters.