WALL STREET ENDED SHARPLY LOWER
par Bansari Mayur Kamdar et Noel Randewich
(Archyde.com) – The New York Stock Exchange ended sharply lower on Tuesday as investors worried about slowing global economic growth and a more aggressive U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) policy to fight inflation .
The Dow Jones index fell 2.38% to 33,240.18 points.
The broader S&P-500 lost 2.81% to 4,175.20 points.
The Nasdaq Composite fell for its part by 3.95% to 12,490.74 points.
Ahead of the post-closing release of their quarterly results, Alphabet and Microsoft both fell nearly 4%, continuing the trend of recent weeks in which high-growth stocks have declined on the expectation that higher interest rates will increase. interest weigh on their profits.
The strong start to the earnings season was overshadowed by the COVID-19 lockdown measures imposed in China and the tightening of monetary policy by the world’s major central banks due to soaring inflation.
Tesla plunged 12% and weighed heavily on the S&P-500 and Nasdaq as investors feared automaker boss Elon Musk would sell some of his shares to help fund his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. of dollars.
About a third of the S&P-500 companies publish their quarterly results by the end of the week, including technology giants. After Microsoft and Alphabet on Tuesday evening, Apple will announce its results on Thursday; the firm at the apple ended the session down 3.7%.
“The results have been pretty good overall. But that’s not really important in the big picture. It’s more about the Fed and other central banks, and now China and COVID,” commented Ross Mayfield, strategist at Baird, in Louisville, Kentucky.
Given the current state of the market, he said, “there is more the assumption of downside risks than upside surprise.”
Among the main sectors of the S&P-500, the energy sector was the only one to gain, by 0.05%, in the wake of the rebound in oil prices after the announcement that Russia would suspend from Wednesday its gas deliveries to Poland.
Of the 134 S&P-500 companies that have already released their quarterly results, 80.6% have beaten analysts’ expectations according to Refinitiv data.
General Electric fell more than 10% after announcing a full-year profit forecast at the low end of its previous estimate.
(French version Jean Terzian)