Linea Mercati Interview 2/18/25
February 19, 2025Linea Mercati Interview 2/19/25
February 20, 2025The New York Stock Exchange is generally in the red on Tuesday, in the face of rising bond yields and so-called safe havens, while investors cautiously welcome the holding of the first talks between Washington and Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine at the end of February 2022.
Around 15:40 GMT, the Dow Jones was down 0.20%. Oscillating sometimes up, sometimes down, the Nasdaq index was down 0.11% and the broader S&P 500 index was up 0.02%.
“The market remains dynamic but, at some point, if yields increase and the dollar appreciates at the same time, it encourages selling” on the stock market, Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities told AFP.
On Tuesday, bond rates tightened, with the yield on ten-year US government bonds settling at 4.51% compared to 4.48% on Friday at the close.
The dollar and gold, considered safe haven assets, rose. The American currency gained 0.29% against the European currency, at 1.0454 dollars to the euro. Gold advanced 1.07% to 2,927 dollars per ounce.
Investors remain particularly cautious about the resumption of talks between Washington and Moscow.
The Russians and Americans agreed on Tuesday in Riyadh to establish a “consultation mechanism” to settle their disputes and will appoint negotiators for the settlement of the war in Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the talks that he was “convinced” that Russia would want to engage in a “serious process” to end the war and said that Europeans should also take part in the discussions and that an agreement on Ukraine must be “acceptable” to all.
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had observed a “keen interest” in removing economic “obstacles” during his meeting in Riyadh with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a reference to sanctions targeting Moscow.
Market players are also in a waiting position before the publication on Wednesday of the “minutes” of the last meeting of the monetary committee of the American central bank (FOMC). On January 29, the American Federal Reserve (Fed) kept its rates unchanged, in a range between 4.25% and 4.50%.
On the tech side, a large part of the semiconductor sector benefited from the presentation by the start-up xAI of its Grok 3 model.
The multi-billionaire and close advisor to Donald Trump, Elon Musk presented on Monday the latest version of Grok 3, the conversational robot developed by his artificial intelligence company xAI, hoping to compete with the American ChatGPT and the Chinese DeepSeek.
This launch comes at a time when the boss of Tesla, SpaceX and owner of the social network X is propelled by the Republican president to the head of a vast project of drastic cuts in federal government spending, which worries Democrats and unions in particular.
In announcing the release of Grok 3, Mr. Musk boasted of presenting “the smartest AI on Earth”.
In this context, around 15:35 GMT, Nvidia advanced by 1.02%, AMD by 0.88%, Marvell Technology by 0.73% while Texas Instrument gained 1.10% and Micron 4.76%.
Elsewhere on the stock market, the airline Delta Air Lines lost 0.37% after one of its planes flipped spectacularly during landing on Monday, coming to a stop upside down on the tarmac of the Canadian airport of Toronto and injuring 18 people, three of them seriously.
The low-cost airline Southwest Airlines was marking time (+0.12%) after announcing plans to cut its workforce by 15%, or the elimination of around 1,750 jobs, by the end of June. Thanks to this “difficult” and “unprecedented” decision, the company estimates that it will be able to save $300 million by 2026.
The video game store chain GameStop fell slightly (-0.13%), after announcing its intention to sell its activities in France and Canada.
