– Looking to take some profit – E24

Wall Street began the week with a decline, and all three leading indexes have remained in the red throughout the first half of the trading day.

This is how it looks just after 7pm on Monday:

• The Dow Jones falls 0.19 percent
• The Nasdaq falls 0.90 percent
• The S&P 500 falls 0.67 percent

It is therefore likely to fall for the second day in a row, after strong job figures contributed to a decline on Wall Street before the weekend.

So far in 2023, there has nevertheless been a lot of cheerful mood in the American stock markets. The broad S&P 500 index is up around 7 percent since the new year, while the technology index Nasdaq is up 14 percent.

That may help to explain the slightly more negative mood seen on Wall Street on Monday, analysts point out to both Bloomberg and CNBC.

– Looking to take out some profit

Chris Larkin at Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade points out that even the most optimistic on Wall Street will admit that a short-term setback can be expected after the start to the year.

– The central indices have been overbought as a result of your strong January rally, says Larkin according to Bloomberg.

Greg Bassuk, head of AXS Investment, points out that some may be taking profits.

– Investors are still looking to selectively take some profit on the back of a very strong January. But what we also see is continued nervousness and uncertainty from investors without more consistency in results from companies, economic data and Fed policy, says Bassuk to CNBC.

Earnings season rolls on in the US this week, even though the big teak giants have finished releasing their figures. Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Uber, Chipotle, Dupont and Pepsi are some of the companies on the programme.

On Tuesday, US central bank chief Jerome Powell will also speak again. The Fed chief is interviewed at an event at The Economic Club of Washington, DC

Dell falls after downsizing

The IT company Dell announced on Monday that it would cut 6,650 jobs, which corresponds to around five percent of its employees.

The cuts come at the same time as the demand for computers and laptops has fallen, write CNBC. Director of Operations Jeff Clarke writes in a melding on Monday that previous attempts to cut costs are no longer enough.

The Dell share falls 2.7 percent shortly after 7 p.m.

Surprising job figures

Friday’s job figures from the US show that the labor market is growing strongly. The strong figures sent the three benchmark indices on Wall Street straight down, in what was otherwise a positive last week for the US stock markets.

Far more jobs were created than expected and the unemployment rate fell to 3.4 per cent.

The figures for January show that 517,000 new jobs were created. In advance, the economists expected that 188,000 new jobs would be created outside agriculture in the US. In December, 223,000 jobs were created.

This figure is important in the assessment for determining the interest rate, in the fight against high inflation.

The US central bank (Federal Reserve, Fed) raised interest rates by 0.25 percentage points on Wednesday last week. The Fed has chosen an aggressive line with successive interest rate hikes. First with three triple interest rate jumps of 0.75 percentage points, also two double interest rate jumps of 0.5 percentage points.