Wall Street continued its upward trend, after hesitating until mid-session... but all's well that ends well, and the S&P500 (+0.5%) set a new absolute "double record" at over 6,118 (with a closing high to boot), the Dow Jones gained +0.9% to 44,565, and the Nasdaq Composite clawed back 0.2% to 20,053.

Tuesday evening's launch by the White House of a gigantic AI investment plan - dubbed 'stargate'- in the United States bolstered 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, as Apple (-0.35%), which faces stiff competition from Samsung and is losing ground in China, slipped from 1st to 3rd place 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 in the USA: the Labor Department recorded 223,000 new claims for the week ending January 13, up 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, holding steady at 1.041 against the greenback, while the yen gained at best 0.1% against the dollar.

The yield on Treasuries climbed +4.5 basis points to 4.645% on the 10-year, while the 30-year was up +5.4 bps at 4.870%.

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", a deliberate breach of respect for the Fed's independence.

But this isn't the first time Donald Trump has engaged in this kind of provocation towards Jerome Powell, and his 'demand' has virtually no chance of being followed up.

But if the Fed were - in response - to be 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 first term.

Copyright (c) 2025 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.