Wall Street ended without a trend, and seemed to have opted for the "algorithmic straitjacket" from the very first exchanges: all bets were off at 3.35pm, and the scores remained frozen for over 6 hours.
But by freezing the situation, the US indices spared themselves the volatility that could have led to a "complicated" scenario in the event of a further downturn: this would have been the 7th for the Dow Jones, which finally clawed back +0.17%.


The S&P 500 dropped 0.21% to 5,051 points, back to its February 22 levels, and the Nasdaq Composite crumbled 0.12% to 15,865 (Tesla fell another -2.7%, Apple dropped -2%), confirming that the 15.950Pts (next target 15,580, the February 21 gap).
The Nasdaq-100 finished stable (+0.04%) at 17,713, thanks to semiconductors, notably ASML +2.3%, KLA +2.2%, AMD +2%, Applied Materials +1.9%, not forgetting Nvidia with +1.6%.

Jerome Powell's statements had a neutral impact: according to him, recent US inflation data have not given central bankers enough confidence to cut interest rates quickly.

The Fed may have to keep interest rates at 5.25% 'longer than expected' (i.e. longer than the 6/9 months preceding a 30-year decline): a rate cut in June looks increasingly uncertain
in view of the US retail sales figures which came in above expectations on Monday (at +0.7%).
The yield on 10-year Treasuries ended at 4.68% (+5pts), a peak of almost five months (and +83 basis points since January 1), while the '30-yr' peaked at 4.800% (4.767% this evening) and the '2-yr' was close to '5%' (+5pts to 4.988% and 5.01% during the session).

The rise in the '30 yr' (+75Pts since January 1) seems to have penalized real estate:
the Commerce Department reports a 14.7% plunge in US housing starts in March compared with the previous month, to an annualized rate of 1,321,000, following a 12.7% jump in February.

U.S. building permits - intended to be a precursor of future housing starts - fell by 4.3% to 1,458,000 last month. Finally, housing completions fell by 13.5% to 1,469,000 (no "weather factor" to explain this decline).

US industrial production rose again by 0.4% in March (as in February), with a 3.1% jump in automobile production (vehicles and equipment).

Also according to the Federal Reserve, which published these figures, the capacity utilization rate in US industry rose by 0.2 points to 78.4% in March, a level 1.2 points below its long-term average (1972-2023).

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