(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange should open on a cautious note Monday morning, in a wait-and-see market before a week that promises to be busy in terms of economic indicators.
Half an hour before the opening, ‘futures’ contracts on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indices fell from 0.1% to 0.2%, announcing a start to the session in the red.
The stock markets have just posted three consecutive weeks of increases, a performance which has allowed the Dow Jones and the S&P to record new historic highs.
Since the start of the year, the S&P 500 is now up more than 20%, its largest increase since the start of the 21st century at this point in the year.
While the third quarter is due to close this evening, Wall Street hopes to be able to end the year in style thanks to economic indicators such as the American markets like, that is to say reassuring about the health of the economy, but not sufficiently vigorous to get the monetary easing cycle back on track.
No economic indicators are on the agenda this Monday, but the week will be busy in this area with the publication, on Friday, of the employment figures for the month of September, which will constitute the high point of the week.
Other indicators will precede them, such as the ISM manufacturing tomorrow, the ADP survey on private employment on Wednesday and the ISM of services on Thursday.
All these statistics will allow investors to test the veracity of the ‘goldilocks’ economic scenario (deceleration of growth accompanied by a slowdown in inflation), currently favored by the markets.
They should also allow them to refine their forecasts in view of the next meeting of the Fed’s monetary policy committee, which will not be held before November 6 and 7.
‘If the hypothesis of a soft landing for the economy were indeed to be confirmed, then we could expect strong stock performance as historical data suggests,’ warns one trader.
