On Wall Street, fears of recession eat away at indices

The New York Stock Exchange, in small shape after two weeks of decline, ended in decline on Monday, investors brooding on fears of a recession.

The Dow Jones index fell 0.49% to 32,757.54 points, the technology-dominated Nasdaq lost 1.49% to 10,546.03 points and the S&P 500 fell 0.90% to 3,817, 66 points, the lowest for two months.

“Equities could not hold up, reeling from recession concerns and as bond yields tighten,” said Edward Moya of Oanda.

Last week, the indices had already dropped 1.7% for the Dow Jones, 2.1% for the S&P 500 and 2.7% for the Nasdaq.

“Today was a day off,” commented Spartan Capital’s Peter Cardillo. Without much macro-economic news, investors nevertheless welcomed a further decline in the homebuilders’ index “with a loss of confidence”, according to the analyst.

“The market seems to be recession focused and technically the stock indices are on a downtrend again. The year-end bounce is evaporating unless there is a quick turnaround,” Cardillo warned. at AFP.

Yields on ten-year US Treasuries climbed to 3.58% around 9:00 p.m. GMT from 3.48% on Friday.

No indicator was on the program on Monday but the menu for the week will be filled with several real estate indicators, then Friday with consumer spending for November and above all the PCE inflation index, the one followed in priority by the Fed.

The other consumer price index (CPI), released last week and generally higher than the PCE, came in at 7.1% year on year in November, down from 7.7% in October but too high to convince the US central bank (Fed) to pause its rate hikes.

Last week, the Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank all raised their key rates by half a percentage point, increasing concerns about a coming recession.

All sectors of the S&P, except energy which followed the price of oil on the rise, ended in the red, communication services falling by more than 2%.

On the side, Tesla has evolved in sawtooth, jostled by the turbulence around the tweets of its founder and new boss of Twitter, Elon Musk. The title, which has so far experienced a dismal month of December (-15%), ended almost at equilibrium (-0.24% to 149.87 dollars). Over the weekend, Elon Musk asked Twitter users to comment on his position as head of the network. A majority wanted him to leave the presidency.

“Tesla’s stock has suffered brutally since the start of the Twitter soap opera and the deterioration of the brand (note: Tesla) linked to Musk is a real problem,” commented Dan Ives, a specialist in the sector of technology at Wedbush.

The tourism and entertainment sector fell sharply like the Wynn Resorts group (-5.17%), the casino operator Penn Entertainment (-4.32%) or Marriott International (-1.57%).

Fear of possibly lower advertising revenue if there is a recession has plagued social networks like Meta (Facebook, -4.14%), Alphabet (Google, -1.88%), Pinterest (-2.54% ).

Disney offloaded 4.77% to 85.78 dollars while its film “Avatar 2” was far from attracting as many spectators as expected in the United States.

Defense firm L3Harris lost 3.62% after announcing an agreement to buy rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne (+1.29%) for $4.7 billion, including debt.