Wall Street closes its 6th consecutive rally, the bullish mechanism having been turbocharged on Wednesday evening by the FED chairman's press conference, which plunged the markets into a bath of unbridled euphoria... and FOMO buying, not only on equities but also on bonds, with the 10-year down 30 points in 36 hours.
The Dow gained +0.44% to 37,250 (new record), the S&P500 +0.27 to 4,720 +0.18%, the Russell-2000 gained +2.7% and ended at the last second -on the final bell- on the symbolic 2,000-point mark.000Pts.
The day before the "4 Witches" session has never been so bullish in the 21st century, with a new all-time record for the Dow Jones and annual highs for all indices (the Russell-2000 has just joined the stock market party in full swing).
It's worth noting that the regional bank index soared by +4.8% after a similar rise the previous day: a veritable mini-crash on the upside, with a clear wave of panic buying by shorts (the sector having been in dire straits since March 10).

Wall Street's main drivers on the eve of the '4 Witches' were fixed-income stocks such as Zions Bancorp +9.2%, Beazer Homes +8.9%, Comerica +8.5%, MCD Holdings +8%, Boston Property +7.2%, Pulte Group +7.1%, US Bancorp +6.7%, Morgan Stanley +6.5%, Wells Fargo +5.6%.... and Goldman Sachs +5.7% (we can imagine Dantean trading gains in Q4).

Over the past year, SOX (the semiconductor barometer) remains unrivalled: it has gained +64% since January 1, +255% over 5 years (and +28% since October 27).

The bullish rally that began 7 weeks ago will go down in history as the most perfectly rectilinear ever seen in the 21st century.
And this is true not only for equities, but also for bonds, as December 13 saw a veritable fireworks display on US T-Bonds: -30Pts on '2033' T-Bonds in 24H (between 4.21% and 3.91%, including -21Pts on Wednesday and -9Pts on Thursday), representing -110Pts in 7 weeks.

The US '30-year', which serves as a benchmark for real estate, is no longer very far from falling back below 4% (4.0300% at its lowest, compared with 4.31% on Wednesday morning).

Expectations of rate cuts are moving at breakneck speed: in mid-November, there were 3 rate cuts, on December 12 there were 6, and now there are 8 or 9 between now and the end of 2024 (i.e. -200Pts... but there are already expectations of -250!).
Yet the Fed has said that it expects only three rate cuts in 2024... but Wall Street seems to have heard 3... squared!

As for US indicators, the robustness of the economy continues: US retail sales rose by 0.3% sequentially in November 2023, where consensus was expecting a slight decline, following a 0.2% drop the previous month (revised from an initial estimate of -0.1%).

The Commerce Department, which publishes these figures, points out that excluding the automotive sector (vehicles and equipment), US retail sales rose by 0.2% last month, after remaining stable in October: the 'Thanksgiving + Black Friday' sales weekend gave a welcome boost to retail sales.

The Labor Department announced 202,000 new jobless claims in the USA for the week of December 4, down by 19,000 on the previous week's revised figure (221.000, compared with 220,000 initially announced).

The four-week moving average came out at 213,250 last week, down 7750 on the previous week's revised average.

Finally, the number of people receiving regular benefits rose by 20,000 to 1,876,000 in the previous week, the most recent period available for this statistic.


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