Wall Street cautious, in the aftermath of the sell-offs that fell mainly against technology stocks, in the wake of the decision by Joe Biden, American president, to reconfirm current number one Jerome Powell at the helm of the Fed.
Among the stocks, sell-offs unleashed on Zoom, which collapsed by about 10% after the video-chat company warned the markets about the risk of a slowdown in turnover.
At about 3.45pm Italian time, the Dow Jones rose by 0.13% to 35,665 points; the S&P 500 advanced by just + 0.08% to 4,686; the Nasdaq is also in plaster, with a variation of -0.05% at 15,846.
The expectations of a Federal Reserve that will continue to go its own way, sooner or later returning to normalizing rates, then raising them, once the bond purchase tapering plan is completed, have led 10-year Treasury rates to jump to about 1.65%.
A new announcement from the White House regarding the oil market came today, this time on oil.
Together with other countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, India and the United Kingdom, the United States will draw on strategic national oil reserves, with the aim of bringing energy prices down.
In total, the US will release 50 million barrels of strategic oil reserves onto the market. However, the quantity was considered to be very negligible, which is why oil prices, instead of going down, go up. The WTI contract is up 1.3% to $ 77.80 a barrel, while Brent is up around 1.6% at $ 80.96 a barrel.
For Wall Street, a week characterized by low trading volumes is looming: on Thursday 25 November the US stock exchange will be closed, on the occasion of the Thanksgiving holiday, and then reopen on Friday 26 November and close at 19 Italian time.
Yesterday on Wall Street the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.26% to 15,854.76; the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 17.27 points to 35,619.25 while the S&P 500 marked a decline of 0.32% to 4,682.94.