(New York, Toronto) The New York Stock Exchange ended Friday on a mixed note, with technology stocks enjoying a rebound while banks weighed down the Dow Jones after a wave of results.
Updated yesterday at 5:00 p.m.
Wall Street’s flagship index lost 0.56%, to end at 35,911.81 points, while the NASDAQ, sucked up by the technology sector, gained 0.59%, to 14,893.75 points and the S&P 500 climbed 0.08% to 4662.85 points.
The Toronto Stock Exchange rebounded on Friday, despite its false start at the start of the session, attributable to disappointing retail sales in the United States and first quarter results below expectations for the American banking sector.
The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 64.60 points to close with 21,357.56 points.
In the currency market, the Canadian dollar traded at an average rate of 79.71 cents US, down from 80.10 cents US the previous day.
On the New York Commodities Exchange, crude oil prices rose US$1.70 to US$83.82 a barrel, while natural gas prices returned US$0.8 cent to US$4.26. million BTUs.
The price of gold retreated by US$4.90 to US$1816.50 an ounce and that of copper depreciated by 12.6 cents US to US$4.42 a pound.
The day got off to a bad start, with a flurry of disappointing macroeconomic data, primarily retail sales for December.
They fell by 1.9% compared to November, while economists expected a figure almost stable (-0.1%).
Added to this failure was the 0.1% decline in industrial production, again in December, when investors were expecting a slight increase of 0.2%.
Last disappointment, the consumer confidence index deteriorated in January (68.8 points against 70.6 in December), according to the survey of the University of Michigan, even beyond what the market (70).
Retail sales “as well as disappointing releases and forecasts from major banks both weighed on the market,” said Brian Prince, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network.
Most of the banks which published their results on Friday did better than expected, but a slight slowdown at the end of the year and certain cautious forecasts were unfavorable.
“The bar was quite high, after the outperformance of the sector in recent weeks,” said Angelo Kourkafas, specialist in investment strategy at the investment company Edward Jones.
Driven by the rise in bond rates, which bode well for an improvement in their margins, bank shares had thus made a good run so far in the first days of 2022.
Investors also winced, he said, at the announcement of a possible increase in costs this year, in particular wages, a consequence of inflationary pressures in the American economy.
“It is something that will have to be monitored” in other sectors, over the publications, warned Angelo Kourkafas.
Inflation remains a major concern, abounded Brian Price, and the poor macroeconomic figures of the day “will not change the opinion of the Fed (American Central Bank)”.
Several members of the Fed’s monetary policy committee have spoken in recent days of upcoming hikes, and the market is betting more than ever on a first hike in March.
Throughout the session, the Dow Jones was kept under water by the banks, namely Goldman Sachs (-2.52%) and JPMorgan Chase (-6.15%), which published a quarterly turnover below expectations.
The establishment also warned that it could miss a key short-term profitability objective.
Also sanctioned, Citigroup (-1.25% to 66.93 dollars), which nevertheless did better than expected on both its turnover and its profit.
Investors focused more on the drop in income from retail banking and market activities.
Only Wells Fargo pulled out of the game (+3.68% to 58.06 dollars) and did much better than expected, with revenues up 13% year on year.
The banking group benefited in part from exceptional items related to the sale of two entities, which boosted revenues by almost a billion dollars.
As for technology stocks, as for banks, the scenario at the start of the year was reversed on Friday, and these high-growth companies were able to regain some lost ground.
The heavyweights of the rating, Microsoft (+1.77%), Apple (+0.51%) or Alphabet (+0.47%), which together weigh more than 7,000 billion dollars in capitalization, have managed to bring the NASDAQ out of its lethargy. The index ended up after moving much of the session in the red.
The Las Vegas Sands casino groups (+14.15% to 42.99 dollars) and Wynn Resorts (+8.60% to 91.47 dollars) soared with the announcements of the Executive Council of Macao on the evolution of gambling legislation in this Chinese territory.
The authorities plan to limit the number of licenses granted to gambling operators to six, which Sands and Wynn benefit from.
Macau also appeared to have backed away from appointing a regulator to oversee day-to-day casino operations.
Manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines were reacting badly to the United States Supreme Court’s blocking of President Joe Biden’s decision to impose the vaccine on companies with more than 100 employees.
Moderna (-2.59%) fell to its lowest level since late June, followed by Pfizer (-1.06%) and Novavax (-1.39%).
Asset manager BlackRock was penalized (-2.19% to $848.60) for missing analysts’ earnings forecast. The group has seen its assets under management grow by 15% over one year, to cross the symbolic threshold of 10,000 billion.