An indecisive session right to the end on Wall Street: the S&P500 finished virtually stable (-0.05%) after having hovered around the equilibrium point for a long time.
No new session record for the S&P, but the Bulls can take ample consolation from the Dow Jones (+0.35%), which has set a 4th consecutive closing record (7th this year) and looks set to set a 5th to end January on a high note, at the zenith of the zeniths (at 38.467 on Tuesday).
Profit-taking in the semiconductor sector weighed on the Nasdaq (-0.75% to 15,510), which buckled under the weight of Micron (-3.3%) and AMD (-3.2% and -3.5% more after its results), Intel (-2.1%), ASML (-1.7%) and NXP (-1.1%).

One of the highlights of the session was Microsoft's quarterly results, which were a non-event (share price unchanged in the after-hours).
Sales were up 18% at $62 billion (in line with the consensus of $61.2 billion): the good surprise came from the cloud division, and above all the Azure platform, whose sales jumped 30% to $25.9 billion.

Alphabet, on the other hand, lost 4.5% following the publication of fourth-quarter sales of $86.3 billion, up 13%.
Net income amounted to $20.7 billion, or $1.64/share, compared with $1.05 the previous year.... but advertising costs are deemed too high.

As for the FED's FOMC meeting on Wednesday, the prospect of a 'status quo' tomorrow is hardly in doubt, with market participants trying to decipher the speech of its Chairman, Jerome Powell, for possible clues as to the timing of future rate cuts.

On the indicators front, tomorrow's ADP survey and Friday's monthly US employment report will provide further information on the US economy.

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