Oil Futures Steady After Gains on Red Sea Concerns
December 19, 2023
Dow Jones ends 475 points lower after 9-day winning streak
December 21, 2023The New York Stock Exchange ended in disarray on Monday, on a breathless market but encouraged by the mergers and acquisitions market and still supported by the prospect of a near-ideal macroeconomic scenario.
The Dow Jones ended in balance, the Nasdaq index returned 0.61% and the broader S&P 500 index gained 0.45%.
“The end-of-year momentum is still there,” commented Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities.
However, the progression of the New York market “is quite limited” to a few stocks, argues the analyst, for whom this new gain “is mainly due to news of mergers and acquisitions”.
The steelmaker US Steel thus jumped (+26.09% to 49.59 dollars) after the announcement of an agreement relating to its takeover by the Japanese Nippon Steel Corporation for around 14.1 billion dollars.
The share price was close to the price proposed by the buyer, i.e. $55 per share.
US Steel’s American competitor, Nucor, the world’s largest capitalization in the sector, was sought after (+0.79%), as was Reliance Steel & Aluminum (+0.98%) or Cleveland-Cliffs (+9.57). %).
The bond market reacted, without fervor, to the remarks of the president of the branch of the American central bank (Fed) in Chicago, Austan Goolsbee, who affirmed that the members of the Fed were not yet discussing rate cuts for the ‘moment.
On Wednesday, however, Fed President Jerome Powell said the opposite.
The bond market was calm. The yield on 10-year US government bonds stood at 3.94%, compared to 3.91% on Friday, at the close.
Taking a step back at the start of the session, the giant capitalizations of the technology sector once again took control, in particular Amazon (+2.73%), Meta (+2.90%), Nvidia (+2.43% ) and Alphabet (+2.50%).
Oil stocks followed the rise in black gold, against a backdrop of tensions in the Red Sea, the scene of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels and now avoided by a number of carriers.
ExxonMobil (+0.74%), Chevron (+0.21%) and ConocoPhillips (+0.31%) were all moving in the green.
Abandoned since the start of Wall Street’s gallop at the end of October, pharmaceutical laboratories have also stood out, like Pfizer (+1.56%), Eli Lilly (+1.37%) or Merck (+0. 88%).
The market welcomed the refusal of software publisher Adobe (+2.47%) to acquire the collaborative design platform Figma, more than 15 months after the announcement of this $20 billion operation.
The San Jose (California) group said there was no “clear path” to address the reservations of EU and UK regulators.
The biotech Illumina finished in the green (+1.57%) after recording the upcoming sale of the cancer screening blood test laboratory Grail, again due to regulatory obstacles. In October, the European Commission demanded this sale, for fear of seeing Illumina acquire a dominant position.
Southwest Airlines fell (-0.14%), weighed down by a $140 million fine imposed by the US Department of Transportation for its management of the 2022 holiday season, which saw the cancellation of 16,900 of its flights.
