The S&P 500 now consolidates by 0.05% to 5,146 pts this Tuesday, while the Dow Jones gains 0.40% to 38,944 pts. The Nasdaq for its part lost 0.47% to 16,028 pts. The two notable events of the week are Nvidia’s GTC conference – which started yesterday – and the Fed’s monetary meeting – which takes place this Tuesday and Wednesday. Nvidia, however, seems to be running out of steam on the stock market after its successive records. Alphabet (Google) for its part supported the Nasdaq yesterday by rebounding in the hope of an agreement with Apple on its Gemini AI tool. On the Nymex, a barrel of WTI crude rose 0.5% to $82.7. An ounce of gold fell 0.3% to $2,157. The dollar index advances 0.4% against a basket of reference currencies.
On the bond markets, the yield on the 10-year T-Bond is 4.31%, compared to around 4.45% for the ’30-year’.
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.
Tomorrow, the Atlanta Fed’s inflation expectations index for March will be released at 3 p.m., while the U.S. Department of Energy’s weekly report on domestic oil inventories for the week ended March 15 will be revealed 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%. It is still almost 96% on May 1 (next monetary meeting). There is also a 37% probability that the federal funds rate range will remain between 5.25% and 5.50% on June 12… Operators will therefore monitor the dot plot very carefully tomorrow evening. the Fed, which presents in dot chart form 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.
On Thursday, operators will follow the weekly US unemployment claims for the week ended March 16 (1:30 p.m.), the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index for March (1:30 p.m.), the current account balance for the fourth quarter (also 1:30 p.m. ), as well as the US composite flash PMI for March (2:45 p.m.), existing home resales for February (3 p.m.) and the Conference Board Leading Indicator Index (same time).
Accenture, Nike, FedEx, Lululemon, Darden Restaurants and FactSet also publish their quarterly accounts on Thursday.
Finally, on Friday, investors will follow interventions by Jerome Powell, Philip Jefferson and Raphael Bostic of the Fed.
Elsewhere in the world, the Bank of Japan has just abandoned its short-term interest rate of -0.1% this Tuesday to set a new target of 0% to 0.1%, with a remuneration of 0.1 % on excess reserves of financial institutions. Major local banks subsequently raised interest rates on ordinary yen deposits for the first time 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.
Values
Nvidia (-2%) is losing ground on Wall Street, although the group was nevertheless offensive yesterday 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.”
“We need bigger GPUs,” Huang said. The Blackwell platform is designed to meet this challenge. Named in honor of David Harold Blackwell, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialized in game theory and statistics and the first black researcher inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, the new architecture succeeds the Nvidia architecture Hopper, launched two years ago.
Super Micro Computer fell 11% on Wall Street, while the manufacturer of servers supporting artificial intelligence applications filed a request for the sale of 2 million common 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% last night. It still posts a hearty gain of nearly 250% this year. The American technology group specializing in servers optimized for AI, which weighs 50 billion dollars on the American market, has just joined the broad S&P 500 index yesterday Monday. Note that the Super Micro servers integrate the chips Advanced AI from Nvidia.
Tencent Music Entertainment (+5%), the Chinese player in music streaming, listed on Wall Street, has just published this Tuesday for its fourth fiscal quarter total revenues of 6.9 billion yuan, or approximately 971 million dollars, representing a decline of 7% year-on-year. However, music subscription revenue rose sharply by 45 percent to 3.42 billion yuan, about $481 million. Quarterly net profit was 1.41 billion yuan or $198 million, up 17 percent 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%.
Pfizer (stable), the American pharmaceutical giant, sold 3 billion pounds – or 3.8 billion dollars – 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. Thus, Pfizer sold more than 790 million Haleon shares, 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 (-2%) consolidates on Wall Street. 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.
MicroStrategy (-17% with the relapse of Bitcoin), with new fundraising through the issuance of convertible bonds, has just acquired 9,245 more Bitcoins for $623 million between March 11 and 18. This comes on top of 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 dollars. 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.
