At the close of the market, Wall Street continues to be optimistic. The S&P 500 finally gained +0.56% to 5,178 points. The Dow Jones rose +0.83% to 39,110 pts. The Nasdaq climbs another +0.39% to 16,166 pts. The two notable events of the week are Nvidia’s GTC conference which began on Monday, and the Fed’s monetary meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to today’s report, housing starts in the United States for the month of February 2024 stood at a rate of 1.521 million units, compared to 1.45 million consensus and 1.374 million a month earlier, in data revised. Building permits stood at a rate of 1.518 million, compared to 1.5 million consensus and 1.489 million in January. Note that construction starts and permits for the month of January have also been revised upwards.
Elsewhere in the world, the Bank of Japan abandoned its short-term interest rate of -0.1% on Tuesday to set a new target of 0% to 0.1%, with a remuneration of 0.1 % on excess reserves of financial institutions. Large local banks immediately raised interest rates on ordinary yen deposits, a first in 17 years. The BoJ has therefore ended 8 years of negative rates, which will result in increases in the cost of credit at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial and Mizuho Financial.
On the oil side, a barrel of WTI crude rose +0.59% to $83.43.
The dollar is relatively stable against the European currency, and exchanges at 0.9199 euros.
An ounce of gold fell -0.3% to $2,157.
Bitcoin managed to halt its decline, and finally ended the session down -2.30% to $66,012 after a plunge to the day’s low of $62,345.
Tomorrow, the Atlanta Fed’s inflation expectations index for March will be released at 3 p.m., while the US Department of Energy’s weekly report on domestic oil inventories for the week ended March 15 will be released. unveiled at 3:30 p.m. The Fed’s monetary decision will be known at 7 p.m., with a very likely new status quo leaving rates unchanged on fed funds between 5.25 and 5.50%. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will hold his press conference at 7:30 p.m.
According to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, the probability of a status quo on Wednesday is 99%. Operators will also monitor, tomorrow evening, the Fed’s ‘dot plot’, which presents in the form of a dot graph the rate forecasts of the twelve members of the monetary policy committee.
In the news of companies listed on Wall Street, PDD, Micron, General Mills, Chewy, BioNTech and KB Home, unveil their accounts tomorrow.
Values
* Tencent Music Entertainment (+6.36% to $11.04). The Chinese player in music streaming, listed on Wall Street, just published this Tuesday, for its 4th fiscal quarter, total revenues of 6.9 billion yuan, or approximately 971 million dollars, representing a decline of 7% in year-on-year. However, music subscription revenue rose sharply by 45% to 3.42 billion yuan, approximately $481 million. Quarterly net profit was 1.41 billion yuan or $198 million, up 17% year-on-year. Diluted earnings per ADS were 12 cents. The consensus was for 14 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $943 million in revenue for the closed quarter. Paid users increased by almost 21%.
* Nvidia (+1.07% to $893.98). The group was offensive at the opening of its GTC conference. Jensen Huang, its general manager, unveiled as expected his Blackwell GPU, the successor to the already highly coveted H100 and H200 GPUs. According to the group, it is the most powerful chip in the world. The H100 and H200 chips had already become the go-to GPUs for AI applications, sending Nvidia’s data center revenues soaring. “Accelerated computing has reached a tipping point: mainstream computing is running out of steam,” Huang told more than 11,000 GTC attendees gathered in person and tens of thousands more online for his keynote address. in the huge SAP Center arena in Silicon Valley. “We need a different way of doing computing – so that we can continue to scale, so that we can continue to reduce the cost of computing, so that we can continue to consume more and more “computing while being sustainable. Accelerated computing represents a significant advancement over general-purpose computing, across all industries.”
The chipmaker plans to start delivering its new flagship artificial intelligence technology as early as 2024. “We think we will arrive on the market later this year,” Colette Kress said on Tuesday, referring to this news. Nvidia artificial intelligence chip
* Super Micro Computer (-8.96% to $910.97). The manufacturer of servers supporting artificial intelligence applications has filed a request for the sale of 2 million ordinary shares. The group also gave subscribers 30 days to purchase up to 300,000 additional shares. The title had already fallen by more than 6% on Monday evening. Despite these drops, the stock still shows an increase of 250% in its market capitalization since January 1. The American technology group specializing in servers optimized for AI, which weighs nearly $51 billion in the American market, has just joined the broad S&P 500 index on Monday.
* MicroStrategy (-5.67% to $1,417.5). The stock is falling with the erratic movements of Bitcoin. With new fundraising through the issuance of convertible bonds, MicroStrategy has just acquired 9,245 more Bitcoins for $623 million between March 11 and 18. This is in addition to a series of purchases totaling $822 million announced a week earlier. Thus, Michael Saylor’s group now owns 214,246 tokens of the queen of cryptocurrencies, for a value close to $13.5 billion. MicroStrategy began buying Bitcoin in 2020 to hedge against inflation. The Bloomberg agency notes that as the maximum total number of Bitcoin is 21 million, the group, the main corporate holder of BTC, is at the head of more than 1% of these units.
* Pfizer (-0.32% to $27.63). The American pharmaceutical giant sold 3 billion pounds (around $3.8 billion) of group shares to the Sensodyne toothpaste brand, Haleon Plc. According to Bloomberg, this is a first step in reducing the American group’s 32% stake in the British consumer products group. Pfizer sold more than 790 million shares to Haleon, including nearly 600 million at £3.08 each. As part of the reduction in Pfizer’s stake, Haleon will buy back approximately 315 million pounds of its own shares. Pfizer’s stake will be reduced to 23%.
* Meta Platforms (-0.15% to $496.24). Mark Zuckerberg’s group should lower the price of its monthly subscription for Facebook and Instagram from 9.99 euros to 5.99 euros, following discussions with privacy regulators, a senior official said on Tuesday. group, cited by Reuters. The decision comes as users increasingly criticize the ad-free subscription service, which launched in Europe in November. The service was launched in response to European legislation on digital markets.
