(New York) The New York Stock Exchange was trading in disarray on Thursday, disappointed by Alphabet’s results while a burst of results in the technology and automobile sectors flooded Wall Street.
The Dow Jones index gained 0.20%, the technology-dominated NASDAQ fell 0.39% and the broader S&P 500 index fell 0.12%.
The US Department of Commerce revealed much stronger than expected growth in US gross domestic product in the third quarter, at 4.9% annualized.
This strong expansion, driven by consumption and the rise in inventories, could make the American central bank (Fed) think about the path to follow for its monetary policy.
“Such strong growth should not force the Fed to raise rates next week”, during its monetary meeting on 1er November, says Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial.
“But that means the Fed is going to indicate that it is thinking about it anyway. The Federal Reserve cannot declare that rate hikes are over when there is such growth and inflation still above target,” the economist added in a note.
Many analysts believe that the 4e quarter will show a clear weakening of growth, but, for Michael Pearce of Oxford Economics, “it is unlikely that a recession will start before the end of the year”.
For its part, the European Central Bank (ECB) left its rates unchanged for the first time since July 2022, but considers, according to its president Christine Lagarde, that it is “totally premature” to discuss a reduction in interest rates. interest despite the decline in inflation in the euro zone.
Ten-year US bond yields, which were in sharp decline before the GDP publication, regained ground, but remained down at 4.91% compared to 4.95% on Wednesday.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which fell by more than 9% on Wednesday after the announcement of the weakness of its cloud computing activity in the third quarter, considered to be the engine of growth, lost another 1.67% around 9 45 p.m. (Eastern Time).
This disappointment was offset by the good performance of this same sector at Microsoft which closed up more than 3% on Wednesday and lost 0.40% during the first exchanges.
Investors will be focused on Thursday on the announcements of Amazon (-0.32%), Intel (+0.82%) and Ford (+0.78%).
Before the market opened, express carrier UPS announced better-than-expected quarterly results, but lowered its forecast for the current fiscal year. Management cited “unfavorable macroeconomic conditions.” The stock lost 1.10%.
The American laboratory Merck posted significantly improved results in the third quarter, still driven by its flagship anti-cancer drug Keytruda, but also by the rebound in sales of its anti-COVID-19 drug (Lagrevio).
The group raised its revenue forecast for the full year with sales now expected to be between $59.7 billion and $60.2 billion. But conversely, it revised downwards its forecast for net profit per share, due to charges linked to the acquisition of the biotech Prometheus for $11 billion in April.
The stock advanced more than 2%.