Wall Street finished strongly, with an acceleration at the start of the session that held up over time. In the end, the S&P500 gained +1.6% (to 5,522) and ended the month virtually unchanged (+0.8%), the Nasdaq Composite jumped +2.6% (to 17,599) and reduced its monthly loss from -4.4% to -1.7%, the Nasdaq-100 gained +3% and ended July down just -2.2% (versus -5.2% the previous day).

The Dow Jones gained +0.2% (to 40.842), but gained +4% over the past month and finished within 1% of its record: it's easy to see what kind of sector rotation (from "technos" to banks and the auto sector) enables Wall Street to remain levitated within 2% of its peaks.

Nvidia climbs +12.8% and shares the limelight with Broadcom (+12%), Qualcomm jumps +8.5% but stalls (-1%) after its very good quarterly results. The SOXX semiconductor index literally exploded by +6.7, one of the strongest rises since 2022.

Meta Platforms (+8% in session and +4% after hour) reported sales ahead of Wall Street expectations, up +22% to $39.1 billion. This compensated for Microsoft's -1% and Dexcom's -2.7% fall.

ADP's US private job creation figures, published early this afternoon, came in at 122,000 in July, below expectations. The human resources firm points out that wage growth slowed to +4.8% year-on-year, which it attributes to the Fed's efforts to combat inflation.

"If inflation ever picks up again, it won't be because of labor", says Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist. Friday's NFP is expected to be around +160,000 new nonfarm payrolls, compared with +206,000 in June.

A major event of the session, the Fed's Monetary Policy Committee maintained its target range for the federal funds rate at 5.25-5.50% at the end of its meeting, as widely expected by the financial markets.

However, Michael Brown at Pepperstone points out that "Jerome Powell hinted that a rate cut is on the horizon, probably as early as the September meeting, via some notable changes to his policy statement".

Copyright (c) 2024 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.