(New York) The New York Stock Exchange ended lower on Friday, hurt by the bankruptcy of the American bank SVB and the fear of possible contagion, which prevailed on the feeling that the American central bank (Fed) will have a less heavy hand than feared.
The Dow Jones lost 1.07%, the NASDAQ index fell 1.76% and the broader index lost 1.45%.
The session was punctuated by the setbacks of the Californian establishment Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), whose listing was suspended before the opening.
At the end of the morning, the American deposit guarantee agency, the FDIC, announced that it had taken control of the bank, which amounts to bankruptcy.
Subject to significant withdrawals from clients, including many start-ups and private equity funds in the technology sector, SVB will not have managed to raise capital to strengthen its balance sheet as it announced on Wednesday.
In a statement sent to AFP, the NASDAQ, on which SVB was listed, indicated that the intervention of the FDIC was “the equivalent of a bankruptcy filing, which justifies a delisting” for the title. form the bank.
This means that the value of the securities will fall to zero and erase the market capitalization of the company, which was still valued over $16 billion on Tuesday evening.
Shaken by this development, several medium-sized and regional banks suffered on Friday, fleeing from wary investors.
Among them First Republic (-14.84%), 14e US institution by asset size.
The profile of the bank is particularly worrying, because its clientele is mainly composed of wealthy individuals and companies, whose deposits exceed 250,000 dollars guaranteed by the federal deposit protection agency, the FDIC.
Also battered, Signature Bank (-22.87%), which has operations in California, or Western Alliance (-20.88%), based in Phoenix (Arizona).
Asset manager Charles Schwab (-11.69%) was the only major financial institution to ostensibly drop out, while JPMorgan Chase (+2.54%) and Wells Fargo (+0.56%) even finished in the green.
“This is the second day of concern around the banking sector, with questions about whether this represents a systemic risk,” commented Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones. “The answer is probably no, but trust [des investisseurs] is a little shaken. »
A sign of a marked resurgence of nervousness, the VIX index, which measures market volatility, rose on Friday to a level not seen for four months.
For the analyst, this development and the macroeconomic indicator of the day “show that we are beginning to feel the effect of the monetary tightening of the Fed on the markets and the economy”.
Before the opening, the US Department of Labor had reported 311,000 job creations in February, more than the 225,000 expected, but also a rising unemployment rate, to 3.4% against 3 .6% in January.
In addition, the average salary increased by 0.2% over one month, less than the 0.3% projected by economists, which was the figure recorded in January.
This picture of an American economy shaken by the rise in interest rates should push the Federal Reserve to abandon a half-point increase in its key rate at its next meeting, a hypothesis mentioned this week by its President, Jerome Powell.
“As long as we do not see a surge in inflation” in the CPI report on the evolution of consumer prices in February, due Tuesday, “the Fed should remain on a rate of increases of a quarter point of percentage per meeting, advanced, in a note, Edward Moya, of Oanda.
This vision of a less aggressive than expected Fed and the climate of generalized risk aversion boosted bonds, which jumped on Friday. Their rates, which move in the opposite direction to their prices, have plunged.
The yield on 10-year US government bonds fell to 3.68%, its lowest level in nearly a month, from 3.90% the previous day’s close.
As for the 2-year rate, which had soared until mid-week, it fell to 4.57%, more than half a percentage point below its level on Wednesday, an extremely rare variation on this market.