The week's most eagerly-awaited U.S. figure was an absolute non-event on Wall Street, with zero closing scores: Nasdaq +0.004% (thanks to Netflix with +2.8%), S&P500 -0.07% (weighed down by the energy sector), Dow Jones +0.04% at 37.711, its second-best closing in history after the 37,715 of January 2 (thanks to Salesforce's +2.8%).

NB: since December 14, the Dow Jones has remained locked within an incredibly narrow range (37,250/37,700), with 90% of trading concentrated between 37,400 and 37.700, i.e. less than 1% of amplitude (since 12/21, i.e. 14 sessions, a record of immobility).

The US bond market, after several hours of post-CPI stagnation (above 4.03% for the '10 yr') eased from 7.45pm onwards to finish with a substantial -5 basis point easing to 3.978%.

Wall Street was unmoved by warnings of rate cuts as early as March from three influential members of the Federal Reserve: New York Fed President John Williams, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin.

It's hard to guess that the session was punctuated by the week's most eagerly awaited figures, namely US consumer prices, which came in slightly above consensus.

The most closely watched component, Core CPI, came in at +0.3% (in line with expectations, but +3.9% annualized, vs. 3.8% expected), with the overall rate coming in at +0.3% (vs. +0.2% expected) and +3.4% annualized (vs. 3.2% expected).

Otherwise, jobless claims remained virtually unchanged last week, falling by -1,000 on a weekly basis to 202.000, which was equivalent to the margin of uncertainty.

CPI is not emerging as a game-changer, and Wall Street will perhaps react to macro data totally unrelated to inflation, or to the release of the first quarterly results, from JP Morgan, Bank of America or Wells Fargo, which will open the results ball this Friday.

Note that Microsoft (+0.5% to $284) briefly snatched first place in terms of market capitalization from Apple, which regained its leadership position in extremis, closing down -0.3% at $185.6 (after -1% during the session and a market cap of $2,866.5 billion at 10:00 pm). Tesla lost -2.9% following the announcement of the shutdown of certain production lines in Berlin.

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