(New York) The New York Stock Exchange ended lower on Wednesday, taking a breather after weeks of levitation, against a backdrop of cautious comments from companies on the state of consumption in the United States.
The Dow Jones fell 1.27%, ending a series of five consecutive closing records. The NASDAQ index fell 1.50% and the broader S&P 500 index lost 1.47%.
“Today’s decline should be interpreted as a pause, after a prolonged upward movement,” commented Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones.
Between the end of October and Tuesday, the Dow Jones appreciated by nearly 16%.
“The inflection is perhaps due to the disappointment of FedEx’s results,” said the analyst. “There are concerns about the extent of the economic slowdown, although a soft landing remains the central scenario. »
The messaging and parcel delivery giant lowered its annual projections, noting a slowdown in demand.
Jostled on Wall Street (-12.05%), it also suffered a disappointment in its net profit, which came out significantly below expectations for its second accounting quarter, completed at the end of November.
Another alert, that of the agri-food group General Mills (-3.57%), owner in particular of Cheerios cereals, which has also revised its annual forecasts downwards to take into account lower demand than expected.
For Angelo Kourkafas, this small bout of anxiety should be put into perspective, because it only caused a moderate contraction of the indices.
Among the stocks targeted on Wednesday, the giant capitalizations of the technology sector, in particular the semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia (-3.01%) and its competitors Broadcom (-2.56%) and AMD (-3.34%).
In this sector, Alphabet was one of the few to survive (+1.13%).
Wednesday’s inflection was limited to stocks, with the bond market still gaining ground. US yields, which move in the opposite direction to bond prices, have fallen violently.
The US 10-year rate stood at 3.84%, compared to 3.93% on Tuesday, its lowest level in five months.
In addition to expectations of rate cuts next year, this drop in rates can be attributed, like the bout of weakness in stocks, to bad news from the American consumer.
The media group Warner Bros (-5.66%) dropped at the very end of the session after several media outlets reported discussions regarding a possible merger with its competitor Paramount Global (-2.02%).
The insurance broker Aon (-6.03%), whose headquarters is in Dublin, but which is listed in New York, was battered after the announcement of the takeover of the American broker NFP for 13.4 billion dollars.
Values in the cryptocurrency sector benefited from the surge in bitcoin, which gained 2.92%, to $43,586.
On January 10, the market is awaiting a decision from the American market regulator (SEC) concerning a new investment product, ETFs, funds placed in bitcoins which would allow clients to benefit from a possible increase in the digital currency without hold directly themselves.
“The market is hoping that some will be approved in the first quarter,” Brian Amrstrong, general manager of the first American cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday.
Cryptocurrency “mining” specialist Marathon Digital Holdings (+0.59%) and Coinbase (+0.43%) took advantage of this to escape the correction.