Wall Street is heading for a rather favorable opening on Thursday morning, in a market more optimistic than the previous day about the Federal Reserve's latest announcements.

Half an hour before the opening, futures contracts on New York indices were up between 0.6% and 0.9%, suggesting a green start to the session.

U.S. equity markets had ended mixed on Wednesday evening, as investors took note of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's latest comments that the central bank was still in no hurry to cut rates.

His comments were a little more pessimistic than the market was expecting, as he ruled out the possibility of a rate hike while remaining vague about when the central bank will ease policy", commented Monica Defend, Director of the Amundi Investment Institute.

Market participants are taking a more favorable approach this morning, realizing that the Washington-based institution could have adopted a firmer tone in view of the recent reawakening of inflation.

'Powell did not raise the possibility of further hikes. He reaffirmed a restrictive monetary policy and that the next rate hike was unlikely", emphasized Tiffany Wilding, economist at Pimco.

The statistics published in the morning had little impact on the trend.

US jobless claims remained stable in the week to April 27, as did the trade deficit, which came to $69.4 billion in March, compared with $69.5 billion the previous month.

Productivity rose by an annualized 0.3% in the first quarter, thanks to a 1.3% increase in output and a 1% rise in the number of hours worked.

On the economic front, a much more important event will take place tomorrow, with the release of the monthly US employment report, which could well influence the Fed's next decisions.

In the meantime, Apple will unveil its quarterly results, with the hope that the Apple company will do as well as its tech peers (Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft).

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