Wall Street ends in disarray

(New York) The New York Stock Exchange failed to find momentum on Wednesday, ending in disarray despite a communication deemed reassuring from the American Central Bank (Fed).

The Dow Jones fell 0.16% to end at 34,934.27 points, the tech-heavy NASDAQ index fell 0.11% to 14,124.09 points, and the broader S&P 500 index fell. gained 0.09%, to 4475.01 points.

Wall Street seemed set to close in extremis in the green, but it ran out of breath to complete its recovery started after a communication from the American Central Bank (Fed).

According to the minutes of the last meeting, on January 25 and 26, “most” of the members of the Fed’s monetary policy committee considered it “justified” that the pace of the upcoming rate hike be “faster” than during the previous round of increases, between 2015 and 2018.

At the time, the institution had allowed a year to pass between its first and its second recovery.

“We were worried about maybe finding new information for the market and which could have pushed the rates higher,” commented Tom Cahill, of Ventura Wealth Management.

“But for the most part, they did not contain anything that would strongly shake the markets,” he added. The benchmark rate for 10-year US government bonds fell slightly to 2.03% from 2.04% the previous day.

If it reassured investors a little, this communication did not, however, sufficiently pull the indices, in particular growth stocks and companies in the technology sector.

Some of the favorite targets of the New York market for a few weeks, in particular Meta (-2.02% and eighth drop in ten sessions), Netflix (-2.30%) or PayPal (-4.26%), have the cost of this lack of enthusiasm.

The Fed minutes did not completely erase the impression left earlier on Wednesday by the surprise rise in retail sales in January (+3.8% against 2.1% expected) and a new jump in prices imports, which are all arguments to encourage the institution to toughen its position.

The questioning by several officials of the withdrawal, announced on Tuesday, of part of the Russian troops posted on the Ukrainian border, was also in people’s minds.

Ukraine “is going to be a source of uncertainty for the market until progress is made”, warns Tom Cahill, “but this may not be resolved in the short term”.

In the table of values, Airbnb benefited from a profit and income higher than expectations (+3.65% to 186.64 dollars).

The activity of the accommodation booking platform is higher than before the pandemic. Airbnb expects first-quarter revenue to be much higher than analysts had been expecting so far.

The television group ViacomCBS was attacked (-17.81% to 29.58 dollars) after the publication of a net profit well below expectations.

The company, which is changing its name to Paramount Global, has, on the other hand, done much better than expected in terms of turnover and gained nearly 10 million additional subscribers to its Paramount+ online video services. and Showtime, reaching 56 million in total.

The virtual platform Roblox fell heavily (-26.51% to 53.87 dollars), weighed down by a turnover lower than expectations and a net loss higher than forecast.

The Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify was penalized (-16.04% to 746.85 dollars) by its declarations on a probable slowdown in its growth in 2022, although having done better than expected in the last quarter of 2021 .

Kraft Heinz attracted investors (+5.59% to 36.62 dollars), seduced by its strategy of raising its prices, which will continue in 2022, to counter rising costs.

They did not hold it against the agrifood giant for its net loss in the fourth quarter, linked to the sale of most of its cheese business to the French Lactalis.