Wall Street opened on an indecisive note on Wednesday, with investors visibly reluctant to take overly strong positions ahead of what promises to be a busy weekend.

In late morning trading, the Dow Jones was down 0.3% at 38.994.3 points, while the Nasdaq continued its rebound, recovering more than 0.3% to 17,778.9 points.

In the absence of anything likely to dictate the trend, market participants prefer to catch their breath before embarking on a more frantic weekend.

On Friday, traders will be keeping a close eye on the release of the PCE price index, a measure of inflation particularly closely watched by the Fed.

They will also be paying close attention to tomorrow's first televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the run-up to November's presidential election.

In a sign of the markets' willingness to take a break, Nvidia is little changed (-0.5%) this morning after its technical rebound of nearly 7% the previous day, when the stock had recently entered a correction phase.

We doubt that the correction will last," stresses Christopher Dembik, Investment Strategy Advisor at Pictet AM.

"We are still optimistic about the rise of AI on the stock market - a central theme in the quarters ahead," he adds.

As further evidence of market apathy, the CBOE's VIX - often referred to as the "fear index" - fell by 0.3% to 12.8.

On the stock front, FedEx soared by almost 15% after unveiling ambitious financial targets for 2025 and hinting at a possible demerger of its LTL freight forwarding business.

On the U.S. market, the yield on 10-year Treasuries tightened sharply to 4.31%, after having been stuck for six days in a range from 4.24% to 4.26%.

Oil prices fell again following the announcement of a slight weekly rise in crude oil inventories last week in the United States.

A barrel of Texas light crude (WTI) consolidated by 0.6% at $80.3.

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