(New York and Toronto) The New York Stock Exchange closed in the red on Thursday digesting disappointing results in the tech sector and fearing a slowdown in American growth after a strong third quarter.
The technologically dominated NASDAQ weighed down the session, losing 1.76% to 12,595.61 points. The Dow Jones fell 0.76% to 32,784.30 points and the S
The Toronto Stock Exchange closed lower, dragged down by losses in the industrials, information technology and battery metals sectors.
The composite index S
In the currency market, the Canadian dollar traded at an average rate of 72.33 US cents, down from 72.56 US cents on Wednesday.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil prices fell US$2.18 to US$83.21 a barrel, while natural gas prices rose 10 US cents to US$3.48. per million BTUs.
Gold prices gained US$2.50 to US$1,997.40 per ounce and copper prices depreciated US$1 cent to US$3.58 per pound.
The predominantly technological index, which entered into correction on Wednesday, sank into negative territory, weighed down in particular by the appreciation of Alphabet’s results.
The parent company of Google, whose action fell by more than 9% on Wednesday after the announcement of the weakness of its activity in the “cloud” (remote computing) in the third quarter, lost another 2.55% to $123.
Microsoft, although more successful in this growing sector of remote computing, also lost 3.75%.
Meta (Facebook), which announced good results the day before, nevertheless lost 3.73% to $288 on Thursday while Mark Zuckerberg’s group warned that geopolitical risks could slow down the advertising market.
Before the market opened, express carrier UPS announced better-than-expected quarterly results, but lowered its forecast for the current fiscal year. Management cited “adverse macroeconomic conditions.” The stock fell almost 6%.
Amazon, which closed down 1.50%, announced impressive results after the close on Thursday.
Online sales giant Amazon raked in $9.9 billion in net profit in the third quarter, three times more than in the summer of 2022 and $3 billion more than expected by the market, thanks to a strong rebound in sales on its platform.
From July to September, the group achieved a turnover of 143 billion dollars (13%), an amount also higher than forecasts. Its stock gained more than 3.55% during electronic trading after the close.
Beyond these mixed results, investors digested the miraculous figure for US growth in the third quarter at 4.9%.
But as Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com sums it up, “this is the best we’ll get.”
The analyst points out that there are already “anecdotal signs that growth is slowing.”
This is even clearer for Hugh Johnson, of Hugh Johnson Economics. “The growth figure was a little stronger than expected, but that was expected and so was the dynamism of consumption,” the analyst explained to AFP.
“The reason the market is having difficulty is because it is worried about the fourth quarter and the first two quarters of next year,” he said.
“Everything will slow down, starting with employment in October,” he assures us when we will know the employment figures next week.
“What matters is not what we had,” i.e. a good third trimester, “but what we are going to encounter,” he summarized.
The market has therefore settled into a defensive attitude.
In Europe, the central bank (ECB) has started to change the course of its monetary policy, Christine Lagarde, its president, mentioning several times the weakening of the euro zone economy.
The ECB left rates unchanged for the first time since July 2022.
In terms of long-term bond rates, yields on ten-year US Treasury bonds fell to 4.84% from 4.95% the day before.
