The New York Stock Exchange closed slightly lower on Tuesday, in a cautious and very thin August market, pending the intervention of the President of the American Central Bank on Friday who might clarify whether the Fed intends to continue to have a heavy hand on interest rates.
According to final results, the Dow Jones fell 0.47% to 32,909.59 points, the Nasdaq index stagnated at 12,381.30 points and the broader S&P 500 index lost 0.22% to 4,128.73 points.
“Investors are cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve (Fed) central bank forum in Jackson Hole,” Wells Fargo analysts said of the highly anticipated annual central bankers’ symposium that begins Thursday in the Wyoming mountain resort. .
“Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech on Friday will be in the spotlight, with market participants widely expecting his comments to be hawkish, reiterating the need for further interest rate hikes to curb the ‘inflation,’ they added.
Same anticipation for Jack Ablin, director of investments at Cresset Capital: “Everyone is focused on the speech on Friday.”
“Investors are preparing to hear tough words from the Fed boss,” added the specialist for AFP.
“Federal funds futures are pricing in higher rates and even a member of the Fed, who normally sided more with the doves (less favorable to tight monetary policy), like Neel Kashkari recently, indicated that the rates would go further than the market expects,” Albin said.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro continued to evolve below parity once morest the dollar, at its lowest in 20 years, at 0.9967 dollars for one euro around 8:10 p.m. GMT.
As for the bond market, he saw the rates on ten-year US Treasury bonds tend to 3.05%.
– Real estate suffers –
Among macroeconomic data, sales of new homes in the United States in July plunged once more for the sixth month in a row, raising fears that a bad patch is setting in for the real estate market in this context of higher mortgage prices. .
They fell to their lowest since 2016, falling by 12.6% compared to June and by almost 30% over one year. “The housing market is in worse shape than the Fed would like to believe,” commented Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Four out of eleven S&P sectors remained in the green, led by energy (+3.62%), while crude prices ended up sharply.
Real estate (-1.45%), health services (-1.39%), communication services (-0.71%) lagged behind.
Twitter stock plunged 7.32% to $39.86 as its ex-security chief accused the social network of covering up vulnerabilities in its protection system and lying regarding its fight once morest fake accounts . These adventures might bring water to the mill of Elon Musk in his legal dispute over his abortive takeover of Twitter. His Tesla Group gained 2.26% to $889.36.
The department store chain Macy’s rose 3.73% despite lowering its sales and profit projections for the year. The brand announced better than expected quarterly results, excluding too many stocks through a series of promotions.
Competing chains like Kohl (+2.09%), Nordstrom (+1.04%) took advantage of the momentum.
Zoom, the video conferencing specialist, fell 16.54% to $81.32 as its second-quarter results fell short of expectations and the company lowered its full-year revenue projections.
Zoom, which is valued on the stock market at $24 billion, now expects annual revenue of around $4.40 billion instead of $4.55 billion previously for its staggered 2023 fiscal year.