Wall Street returns to lose ground after the recovery received on the eve, in a session characterized by high volatility. At about 4 pm Italian time, the Dow Jones loses 678 points (-1.97%), to about 33,686 points; the S&P 500 fell by 2.54% to 4,294 points, while the Nasdaq slipped by 3%, or more than 400 points, to 13,447 points.
Among other things, the updated estimates of the International Monetary Fund arrive in these minutes, which revises down the forecasts on global GDP for 2022 by half a percentage point: the IMF now expects a slowdown in world gross domestic product from +5.9 % in 2021 to + 4.4% in 2022.
The downgrade is explained by the increase in infections from Covid, the bottlenecks affecting the supply chain and higher inflation.
From the World Economic Outlook of the Washington institution, it emerges that the outlooks, in particular, of the two main global economies, namely the United States and China, were revised downwards.
US GDP growth is now expected at 4% this year, down 1.2 percentage points from previous forecasts, while China’s economy is estimated to grow by 4.8%, 0.8 points percentages less than the previous outlook.
Returning to Wall Street, the expectation of traders is for the first meeting of the year of the FOMC, the monetary policy arm of the Fed, which will start today and end tomorrow, Wednesday 26 January, with the announcement on the decisions of monetary policy.
A stalemate is expected for rates, which should be confirmed in the range between zero and 0.25%, in the face of a tapering process that has already begun, destined to be speeded up.
Today, the rise in US Treasury rates puts pressure on technology stocks, although 10-year rates, around 1.77%, are far from the 1.90% threshold, the highest value since the end of 2019, which was regained last year. week.
Nvidia’s stock prices are down, after Bloomberg’s indiscretions, according to which the American giant is ready to offload the purchase of the chip designer Arm from Softbank, for a value of $ 40 billion.
Among the hi-tech stocks, Apple, Meta (formerly Facebook), Tesla, Amazon are also down.
From the corporate front, look at the quarterly report of the American pharmaceutical giant and manufacturer of anti Covid vaccines Johnson & Johnson.
The group announced that it ended the fourth quarter of the year 2021 with unadjusted profits up to $ 4.74 billion, nearly tripled from $ 1.74 billion in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue also grew, up 10.8% year-on-year from $ 22.48 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, mainly thanks to international sales of the Covid vaccine, amounting to $ 1.82 billion.
However, the turnover was less than the $ 25.29 billion expected by the consensus. Adjusted eps came in at $ 2.13, better than the $ 2.12 per share expected by analysts.