Wall Street opens lower, pause ahead of Fed minutes

The New York Stock Exchange opened lower on Wednesday, pausing after several sessions of gains, pending the minutes of the last meeting of the American central bank (Fed).

Around 3:45 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones lost 0.62%, the Nasdaq index dropped 1.18% and the broader S&P 500 index fell by 0.83%.

The indices only reacted marginally to the publication of retail sales in the United States in July, which were stable compared to June, while economists were expecting a slight increase (+0.1%). The core index, excluding autos and fuel, came in at 0.8%, better than expected.

“This is new information that confirms what we already knew, that the US economy is not in recession” and that “consumers are resisting persistent inflation”, commented, in a note, Cliff Hodge of Cornerstone Wealth. “It’s positive, but I think the market is looking mainly ahead”, with the publication, at 6:00 p.m. GMT, of the minutes of the last meeting of the American central bank (Fed), tempered Peter Cardillo, of Spartan Capital. “After four or five sessions of significant gains, (…) we have some profit taking and caution,” he added.

This slight resurgence of tension was also felt on the bond market. The yield on ten-year US government bonds rose above 2.90% for the first time in a month. The recent figures which demonstrated the vigor of American consumers, who were said to be moribund, have contributed to changing the expectations of operators in terms of monetary policy. After betting for a time on a half-point hike in the Fed’s key rate at the next meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee at the end of September, the market is expecting a further hike of 0.75 percentage points. , which would be the third in a row.

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In this context, the technology sector, which has fueled much of the rebound recorded since June, was at half mast, from Amazon (-1.83%) to Nvidia (-2.10%), via PayPal. (-2.34%). For Patrick O’Hare, of Briefing.com, the decline in the indices on Wednesday is also due to the fact that they stumbled on Tuesday on important technical thresholds, on the rise. The S&P 500, in particular, nearly broke above its 200-day average (up nearly 19% since its June low), a major level for investors, before falling back.