On Wall Street, Google and Microsoft lead the Nasdaq

New York (AFP) – The Nasdaq slumped on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, weighed down by poor performance from big tech names like Google and Microsoft, while the Dow Jones held steady.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index sank 2.04% to 10,970.99 points, the broader S&P 500 index fell 0.74% to 3,830.60 points while the Dow Jones stagnated ( +0.01%) to 31,839.11 points, according to final results.

“Microsoft and Google,” among the biggest capitalizations in the stock market, “have really weighed on the tech sector,” said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities.

The title of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has indeed collapsed 9.63% to 94.82 dollars and that of the software giant Microsoft plunged 7.72% to 231.32 dollars.

They alone erased more than $250 billion in market valuation from the Nasdaq on Wednesday.

For Google, it is the weak growth of its turnover that has scared.

Its parent company Alphabet posted third-quarter revenue of $69.1 billion on Tuesday after the close, up 6% year-on-year, its weakest growth since 2013, except during the start of the recession. pandemic. Its net profit came out at 14 billion dollars, a result well below expectations.

Disappointment in growth also for Microsoft. Despite sales and a quarterly result slightly above expectations, the software group suffered from the effect of the strong dollar and showed a slowdown in its growth in the cloud sector (remote computing services of its Azure subsidiary). compared to the same time last year.

After Alphabet, Meta..

Meta (Facebook) did not shine either (-5.59% to close at $129.82).

The group also announced, after the market closed, results that made people cringe with a halving of its profit and revenues in line with expectations but down. The title Meta based more than 11% in electronic trading after closing.

Falling bond yields, which move inversely to bond prices, should have supported the stock market and this is what kept the Dow Jones in positive territory.

The rate on 10-year Treasury bonds fell to 4.01% instead of 4.10% the day before and that of thirty years to 4.16% against 4.25%. The dollar lost another 1% for the second session in a row against the major currencies.

“The focus was on falling rates today and that helped stock buying across industrials and across the market, except for the Nasdaq which suffered from the outlook for Google and Microsoft,” explained Peter Cardillo.

A large majority of the eleven S&P sectors ended in the green, driven by energy, health services and materials. The communication sector dropped more than 4%.

The drop in rates was also influenced by the Bank of Canada which, while it raised its rates again, did so to a lesser extent, by 50 basis points instead of 75 in September.

But above all “its governor, Tiff Macklen said that they were approaching the end of the monetary tightening cycle”, noted the Spartan Capital analyst.

This gave balm to the hearts of observers of the American Fed, which is holding its monetary meeting next week with a further increase in its key rate by three quarters of a point.

The Bank of Canada’s warning could “set the stage for the Fed to begin a break early next year,” Cardillo said.

Dow Jones heavyweights Boeing fell 8.77% to $133.79. The aircraft manufacturer suffered a heavy loss of $ 3.3 billion in the third quarter due to higher costs for its defense programs, including the Air Force One presidential plane and its KC-46 tanker.

Mobileye, the Intel subsidiary specializing in assistance and autonomous driving, made a remarkable entry into the New York market, against a backdrop of a sharp slowdown in IPOs, many companies being cautious in the face of a volatile market and an uncertain macroeconomic environment.

The title of the Israeli company, introduced at 21 dollars, concluded at 28.97 dollars, on a jump of 37.95%.