Wall Street catches its breath and ends down, weighed down by technology

New York (awp/afp) – The New York Stock Exchange ended lower on Monday, catching its breath after a solid month of November and ahead of the American employment figures this week.

The technology sector weighed down the indices, causing the Nasdaq to fall by 0.84%. The Dow Jones lost 0.11% and the S&P 500 finished down 0.54%.

“The market has stalled today after rising a lot. We are seeing profit taking,” summarized Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital while the month of November was the best in over a year for the indices New Yorker.

For Sam Stovall of CFRA, the market also experienced “a moment of rest” after the recent strong rally.

At the end of the week, “the S&P 500 had recovered everything it lost between the end of July and the end of October”, the chief investment strategist told AFP.

Since the start of the year, the broader S&P 500 index, the most representative of the market, has gained almost 20%. The Dow Jones is up almost 9% and the Nasdaq is up around 33% so far.

But on Monday, investors took a breath, gauging the possible impacts of a slowing economy.

“We had the industrial orders index down 3.6% in October. This is further proof that the economy continues to slow,” noted Peter Cardillo.

On Friday, investors will watch for one of the most important indicators for monetary policy, that of job creation and unemployment for November.

Analysts expect 175,000 job creations compared to 150,000 in October. The unemployment rate is expected to remain stable at 3.9%.

On the market, it was especially the technology sector that weighed on the market, with all the big names in tech losing between 1% and 2.5%, from Amazon to Alphabet, including Apple, Microsoft and Netflix.

Meta (Facebook) dropped 1.48% to $320.02. His boss Mark Zuckerberg sold $185 million worth of shares in November, according to SEC documents released Friday evening.

This is the first time since 2021 that Mark Zuckerberg has sold his shares. These have increased by 180% in one year.

Semiconductor stocks suffered, such as Nvidia (-2.68% to $455), but also Intel (-3.18%) and AMD (-2.23%).

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo pleaded on Saturday for more means to better control chip exports to China in the name of US national security.

Uber benefited (+2.28% to $58.65) from its introduction into the prestigious S&P 500 index which brings together the 500 largest companies in New York.

This is synonymous with a capitalization of at least $14.5 billion and a high level of liquidity of the securities.

Being part of the S&P 500 will allow Uber stock to be systematically included in numerous financial products that mechanically follow its fluctuations, ETFs, which should give it even more scale.

Spotify, the world’s number one music platform, based in Stockholm but listed in New York, soared 7.44%, hailed for reducing its workforce by 17%, or 1,500 jobs.

The airline Alaska Air fell by 14.25% as it wants to buy its rival Hawaiian Airlines for $1.9 billion. Hawaiian’s stock soared 192.59% to $14.22 while the price offered by Alaska Air was $18 per share.

Bitcoin’s surge to more than $41,700 around 10:00 p.m. GMT boosted the cryptoasset sector such as the Coinbase exchange platform (+5.48%).