Wall Street to attention awaiting the speech that will be given today by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 34.99 points (-0.1%) yesterday, down for the third consecutive session; the S&P 500 lost 0.61%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 1%.
The leap in US Treasury yields weighed on: 10-year government bond yields jumped to 3.619%, a record since 10 January, while 1-year Treasury yields soared to 4.841%, the record since 6 last January. Yields on two-year Treasuries also rose to 4.412% since 6 January.
Maximum attention to the speech that will be made today by Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, after fears about new aggressive rate hikes rekindled with the publication, last Friday, of the no-farm payrolls report.
The U.S. jobs report found that the U.S. economy created as many as 517,000 new jobs last month, well above consensus-expected growth of 185,000 new payrolls, and at a much stronger pace than even the 223,000 new jobs. jobs created in December.
At around 12.50am GMT, Dow Jones and S&P 500 futures are virtually flat, with changes of -0.09% and +0.01% respectively, while Nasdaq futures are up 0.12%.
Jerome Powell will speak today, Tuesday February 7, at the Economic Club of Washington.
Last week, it was Powell’s words that sparked the buying on Wall Street, with investors giving a dovish interpretation to his statements.
Powell spoke at the press conference following the announcement by the Fomc, the monetary policy arm of the Fed, that on Wednesday February 1st announced the decision to raise US interest rates by 25 basis points, to the new range between 4.5% and 4.75%, a record since October 2007.
On the corporate front, great excitement on what seems to be confirmed as the great theme of 2023: artificial intelligence.
In the last few hours, Microsoft has confirmed the launch of an event, scheduled for today which, according to some sources, could be connected to the AI chatbot ChatGPT, on which the US software giant is focusing.
Yesterday, Google officially launched its challenge to ChatGPT by announcing its Bard chatbot, and Chinese giant Baidu, also known as Chinese Google, did the same.
On the Hong Kong stock exchange, Baidu’s stock has soared by more than 15%, flying to all-time highs since mid-February 2022.
Alphabet, the holding company of which Google belongs, marks a slight rise in the pre-market after yesterday’s loss, despite the announcement of the AI chatbot Bard.
Meanwhile, in the pre-market on Wall Street, Baidu shares, also traded on the New York Stock Exchange, soared by 14.5%.