The New York Stock Exchange closed in the green on Thursday, helped by a new wave of cheap purchases, as well as indicators that validate the scenario of an economy resilient to controlled inflation.
The Dow Jones gained 0.58%, the Nasdaq index 1.00% and the broader S&P 500 index 0.75%.
The session started with rather well-received macroeconomic data.
The producer price index (PPI) came in above expectations, at 0.2% in August compared to the 0.1% projected by economists, but Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics said many of the factors behind the surprise “were more of a noise than a true signal”.
Better still, for Michael Pearce, from the same firm, the PPI and the CPI consumer price index, published on Wednesday, suggest that the PCE index, to which the American central bank (Fed) gives more importance, has clearly decelerated in August.
“With gasoline prices falling this month,” he warns, “inflation looks set to return to 2% in September,” the Fed’s long-term target.
Another indicator of the day, new unemployment registrations came out in line with economists’ projections.
“They remain relatively stable,” commented Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com, “which lends credence to the hypothesis that the labor market is not suffering from rapid and significant erosion.”
“The indicators validate the scenario of a soft landing for the economy,” the analyst insisted.
In addition to macroeconomic data, “the resurgence of giant technology caps has helped give the market momentum,” according to Patrick O’Hare.
In the microprocessor sector, only the giants Nvidia and Broadcom were favoured by investors, with Intel (-1.43%), Qualcomm (-0.95%) and Texas Instruments (-3.18%) being shunned.
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Among the stars of the rating, Meta (+2.69%) and Alphabet (+2.23%) were also popular, the latter benefiting from a hunt for bargains after a chaotic start to the year.
“Some are afraid of missing the boat” and letting still attractive valuations slip by, Patrick O’Hare stressed.
Traders were also encouraged by the S&P 500’s ability to hold above an important technical threshold, namely the average of the last 50 trading days.
On the bond market, rates were firm after a long slide over several days. The yield on 10-year US government bonds stood at 3.68%, compared to 3.65% the previous day at the close.
The pharmaceutical group Moderna plunged (-12.36%), with operators reacting badly to the 20% downward revision of research and development budgets planned for the period 2025-2028.
Warner Bros Discovery (+10.37%) rode the wave of news of a new broadcasting deal with cable operator Charter Communications.
Separately, CEO David Zaslav said WBD would add more than 6 million net subscribers to its Max streaming platform in the current quarter, compared to just 3.6 million in the previous period.
Semiconductor designer Micron (-3.79%) suffered the backlash from a recommendation downgrade from Exane BNP Paribas, which sees the group suffering from competition from other major players in the sector.
The airline Alaska Airlines (+1.16%) benefited from a significant increase in its forecasts, thanks to higher than anticipated passenger numbers and the decline in kerosene prices.
The petrochemical group Dow (-0.93%) lowered its forecasts, due to a problem that occurred in July at a cracking site (transformation of oil or gas into ethylene).
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