On Friday, Wall Street posted another session of sharp declines, with -1.8% on the S&P500 (to 5,346, medium-term support broken), -2.4% on the Nasdaq Composite (to 16,776, after an incursion towards 16,580 around 4:15pm) and -1.5% on the Dow Jones (to 39,737).

Over the week, the S&P and Dow dropped -2.1%, and the Nasdaq -3.3%, which isn't very impressive... but volatility literally soared, with +60% for the 'VIX' at the start of the session (to 29.65, its worst mark since March 2023) and a 'lull' to 23.4, i.e. +26%, its worst score since the start of the year, ahead of the +22.5% of July 27.

It would therefore be no exaggeration to speak of paroxysmal volatility, which is a fair reflection of an anthology of sell-offs, such as that seen on Intel, with -30% during the session and -26% at the close (at $21.5), its worst fall in history: the stock is back to its December 2012 levels.

Also of note were Amazon -8.8%, Applied Materials -7.4%, Super Micro Computer -7.1%, Microchip -10.6%, while Nvidia escaped with -1.8% after starting the session at -6% (investigation into abuse of dominant position).

Wall Street was dampened by the publication of US employment statistics for July: the slowdown in the labor market was sharper than expected, with the US economy generating just 114,000 non-farm jobs, well below market expectations, which were generally in the region of 170,000.

The unemployment rate rose by a sharp 0.2 points to 4.3%, where economists had expected it to remain stable at 4.1%, while the labor force participation rate stood at 62.7%, and average hourly earnings rose at an annual rate of just 3.6%.

In addition, non-farm job creation for the previous two months was revised, from 218,000 to 216,000 for May and from 206.000 to 179,000 for June, i.e. a total revision balance of -29,000 for these two months (10th downward revision in the last 14 months).

This marked deterioration in the labor market could thus raise concerns about the health of the US economy, as Jerome Powell indicated last Wednesday that he was worried about a possible "hard landing" for growth.

These concerns were reinforced 90 minutes later by the unexpected -3.3% drop in US industrial orders in June (the second fall in a row), even though economists were forecasting a rebound of around 0.5%.

These worse-than-expected figures thus confirmed the less rosy picture of the US economy painted by the statistics published in recent weeks, in particular the employment report, deemed 'worrying' by some analysts.

Friday's wave of risk-offs triggered a flight to safe havens: US T-Bonds shed 18 basis points to 3.795%, and the 2-yr yield was down 27 basis points to 3.874%, which meant that the Fed's next meeting in September was expected to be -50 basis points (rather than -25 basis points).

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