Wall Street is on a roll, after hesitating until mid-session... but all's well that ends well, and the S&P500 has set a new absolute "double record" at 6,118Pts (with a closing high to boot).
The Dow Jones is up 0.93 (to 44,565), while the Nasdaq is up 0.23% to 20,053 and closing in on its zenith of 6,200Pts.

Tuesday evening's launch by the White House of a gigantic AI investment plan - dubbed 'stargate'- in the United States reinforced the feeling of confidence prevailing on the markets.

All US indices ended in the green, including the Russell-2000, which erased the 0.6% lost the previous day.
Beyond the optimism surrounding AI, Wall Street was supported by industrial stocks (+1.1%), while the 'Fantastic 8' stagnated.

Nvidia (+0.1%) consolidated its position as the world's No. 1 capitalization at nearly $3,560 billion, while Apple (-0.35%), which faces stiff competition from Samsung and is losing ground in China, could well go from being the world's No. 1 capi to No. 3 in a single week.
Note the 16% surge in ARM on Wednesday... but the market got a little carried away and the stock lost 7.5%.

The 'number of the day' concerned weekly jobless claims: the Labor Department announced that 223,000 new jobless claims had been registered in the US in the week to January 13, up by 6,000 on the previous week.

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came out at 213,500, up anecdotally by 750 on the previous week.

On the FOREX side, the session was extremely quiet: the euro's recent rally stalled at the start of the week, and it is stable at 1.041 against the greenback, with the yen gaining at best 0.1% against the dollar.

The yield on Treasuries climbed +4.5pts to 4.645% on the 10-year, while the 30-year posted +5.4pts to 4.8700%.

Finally, Donald Trump, who took part in a 45-minute duplex with the Davos Forum, reiterated his intention to fight inflation, reduce the US trade deficit and, above all, dropped the phrase: "I demand that interest rates fall immediately", which constitutes a deliberate breach of respect for the FED's independence.

But this is not the first time that Donald Trump has indulged in this kind of provocation towards Jerome Powell, and his "demand" has virtually no chance of being followed up.
But if the FED were to respond by being openly 'uncooperative', this could also worry Wall Street... which this evening is showing no signs of annoyance (given the day's record levels), as this kind of 'Trumpism' was commonplace during his 1st term.

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