Wall Street appears to be on course for a seventh consecutive week of gains: after a hesitant start to the session, buyers took the upper hand and strengthened their grip as the hours passed, until US indices closed on annual highs and even in immediate contact with the absolute records of late 2021 or early 2022.

Balance sheet wraps" pushed the indices to their peaks: annual gains reached their zenith with +20.4% for the S&P500, +37.9% for the Nasdaq Composite and +48.3% for the Nasdaq-100, which approached +50% - a performance achieved only once before in the 21st century.

What a show of strength and confidence in tempered steel, four days before the '4 Witches' session.

And there's always a 'SOX' index to serve as a locomotive when the 'Fantastic 7' are down (Meta -2.3%, Tesla -1.7%, Alphabet and Apple -1.3%). SOX once again broke away from other sector indices thanks to Broadcom +9%, Applied Materials +5%, KLA +4.6%, Intel, AMD and ON-Semiconductors +4.3%, Microchip +3.3%, Western Digital +2.9%.

In the United States and Europe, where three absolute records were also broken on Monday (CAC40 'GR', DAX40 and Euro-Stoxx50), investors showed unshakeable confidence in the continuation of the "end-of-year rally", on the eve of the start of the Federal Reserve's FOMC meeting.

Last Friday's publication of better-than-expected employment figures for November confirmed the scenario of a "soft landing" for the US economy, which would make monetary easing less urgent.

But this has already been forgotten, and other figures - why not inflation on Tuesday - will reassure Wall Street, which has been applauding the emergence of a "Goldilocks" scenario for the past six weeks, in the hope that the CPI will confirm the irreversible decline in inflation... and the drop in fuel prices in November should make a major contribution to this.

Caution can only be seen on the bond markets, which have been consolidating since Friday: T-Bonds ended stable at 4.245% after having exceeded 4.27% during the session (still close to the 4.1% tested last Thursday).

Copyright (c) 2023 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.