(New York) The New York Stock Exchange concluded divided, but on the reserve, Thursday, on the eve of the publication of the highly anticipated US employment figures.
Updated yesterday at 5:44 p.m.
According to final results at the close, the Dow Jones fell 0.26% to 32,726.82 points and the S&P 500 0.08% to 4151.94 points while the tech-heavy NASDAQ climbed 0, 41% at 12,720.58 points.
Stocks swayed amid a few disappointing earnings announcements and more statements from a Fed official.
“But it was a session without a big catalyst theme as bond yields slipped a bit,” commented Scotiabank’s Shaun Osborne. These, rather volatile, stood at 2.68% instead of 2.70% the day before.
“Caution was in order ahead of Friday’s jobs report,” added Schwab analysts.
Weekly jobless claims released before the market opened rose a little to 260,000 (+6,000) last week, perhaps a harbinger that the US jobs market is slowly shrinking, noted Nancy Vanden Houten of Oxford Economics.
For official employment figures in July, analysts expect Friday the announcement of 250,000 job creations against 372,000 in June and an unemployment rate stable at 3.6%.
The US Department of Commerce also announced a further sharper-than-expected reduction in the trade deficit in June. Imports fell 0.3% due to weaker demand from US consumers and businesses.
“Overall, the outlook for global growth is darkening: the strong dollar and weaker domestic demand will have implications for trade flows going forward,” warned Rubeela Farooqi, economist for HFE.
Following several recent statements from Fed officials, Loretta Mester of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Office said she sees fed funds rates going up to 4% (from 2.25 % and 2.50% these days) and that a break in monetary tightening may only come in the second half of 2023.
Investors also paid attention to the sharp rate hike (half a percentage point) by the Bank of England (BoE). But above all, the BoE warned, according to it, that the United Kingdom would enter a recession until the end of 2023.
In the commodities market, U.S. oil WTI fell back to pre-Ukraine invasion levels below $90, depressed by slumping demand for fuels last week in the States -United.
On the stock exchange, the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly dropped 2.56% to 305.79 dollars after having suffered a 4% decline in its quarterly turnover, handicapped by the evolution of exchange rates.
Travel booking site Booking moderated its decline to 0.98% after a strong second quarter, but a weaker outlook afterwards, signaling that room bookings for July had decelerated markedly.
Meta (Facebook) which announced its intention to launch a loan and to have, for the first time in its history, recourse to debt to develop, rose by 1.05% to 170.57 dollars, but yielded 0.18% in electronic trading after closing.
The title of the Coinbase cryptocurrency platform, in bad shape since May with the decline in cryptoassets, jumped 10.01% to 88.90 dollars thanks to the announcement of a partnership with the investment fund BlackRock.
Meal delivery company Doordash ended up 2.34% and jumped 12.16% after the close as the group posted better-than-expected second-quarter results.
The Toronto Stock Exchange closed higher on Thursday as investors took a wait-and-see approach ahead of much-anticipated data on the Canadian and US labor markets on Friday.
The Toronto floor’s S&P/TSX Composite Index gained 31.10 points to end the session with 19,577.04 points.
On the Toronto floor, the energy sector retreated 4.47% on Thursday, with all of its constituent companies closing the session in the red.
On the New York Commodities Exchange, crude oil prices fell US$2.12 to US$88.54 a barrel, while natural gas fell 14 cents US to US$8.12 a million. of BTUs.
The price of gold jumped US$30.50 to US$1806.90 an ounce and that of copper rose 1.5 cents US to US$3.48 a pound.
On the currency market, the Canadian dollar ended the day at the same point as the day before, at an average rate of 77.80 US cents.