Wall Street pushed hard to the upside until mid-session, then cut its lead a little in the afternoon.

This "3 witches" session actually saved January's stock market term, as the day's gains were almost equivalent to the month's gains (except for the Dow Jones).

Buyers continued to favor Nasdaq stocks (+1.5% to 19,630 for a weekly score of +2.5%), while the S&P500 climbed to 6,015 (+1.3%) but ended the day at 5,996 (+1% and +2.9% weekly) just below 6,000pts, weighed down by the "pharmas": Merck -2.8%, Eli & Lilly -4.3% and Regeneron -1.8%.

The Nasdaq-100 (+1.65%) was boosted by Intel +9.2%, Marvell +6.1%, Broadcom +3%, Micron +3.1%, Applied Materials +3% and AMD +2.5%.

It's worth noting that all speculative assets have been soaring for the past 48 hours, particularly cryptos, with BTC at $105,900, back on its highs from $90.000 at the beginning of the week (still the rumour of Donald Trump creating a crypto "reserve")... and which has literally rocketed upwards, with +16% in 5 sessions.
On the "macro" front, the news is rather good: US industrial production rose by 0.9% in December according to the Fed (more than expected), after a modest +0.1% in November.

The Fed points out that 'higher aircraft and parts production contributed 0.2 percentage points to this growth following the resolution of a work stoppage at a major aircraft manufacturer (i.e. Boeing)'.

Also according to the Federal Reserve, the capacity utilization rate in US industry improved by 0.6 points to 77.6% in December, a level still 2.1 points below its long-term average (1972-2023).

The Commerce Department reported a 15.8% jump in US housing starts in December 2024 compared with the previous month, to an annualized rate of 1,499,000.

Building permits for US homes - thought to foreshadow future housing starts - were down 0.7% to 1,483,000 last month.483,000 last month.

While cryptos are the stars of the week, WTI oil ($78) soared +2.4% on the week, closing in on its highest level since last summer (mid-August).


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