Wall Street bounces back at the end of the week after a scare about taxes

Helped by good American indicators, the New York Stock Exchange rebounded strongly on Friday after being scared the day before about a possible increase in the tax on financial transactions.

According to final results on Wall Street, the Dow Jones finished up 0.67% to 34,043.49 points. The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, jumped 1.44% to 14.016.81 points. The S&P 500 climbed 1.09% to 4,180.17 points.

By Thursday, all three indices had lost almost 1% after press reports that the White House was considering taxing more capital gains on wealthier Americans.

“The market has been strong, recovering almost everything it lost the day before,” said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities, adding that Thursday’s decline “was more of an excuse to take profits since it is not totally fresh news for the markets ”.

Joe Biden has indeed campaigned indicating that he wanted to raise taxes for the richest.

According to the press, the Biden administration could announce next week plans to tax financial transactions at a rate of 39.6% instead of the current 20% for people with annual income above $ 1 million. Asked by AFP, the US Treasury abstained from comments.

Over the week after three out of five sessions down, the Dow Jones finally dropped only 0.46%, the Nasdaq fell 0.25% and the S&P 500 0.13%.

Trade was also driven by good economic indicators in the United States. Sales of new single-family homes climbed in March to their highest level in nearly 15 years, with just over 1 million transactions, up 20.7% from a bad February.

In addition, the PMI activity index in services in the United States climbed in April to a record (63.1).

Nine of the eleven sectors of the S&P 500 were shown in the green, starting with banks (+ 1.85%), materials (+ 1.68%) and information technologies (+ 1.44%).

Next week will be one of the richest in corporate earnings announcements, with Tesla starting Monday at close, then express carrier UPS and Alphabet (Google) on Tuesday and Boeing on Wednesday.

Investors will also be watching for the outcome of the Central Bank (Fed) monetary meeting on the same day. They do not expect a change in policy or a signal of an imminent reduction in asset purchases to support the economy.

On Friday, the semiconductor giant Intel, which nevertheless recorded a better than expected result despite a decline in turnover, was shunned (-5.32%).

The toy maker Mattel saw its title advance by 0.81% after sales up sharply in the first quarter thanks in particular to Barbie dolls.

Airlines have picked up steam after being battered this week following the expected news of further losses in Q1, as have American Airlines (+ 5.18%) and United Airlines (+4.08 %).

Yields on ten-year US debt remained stable around 1.55%.