The S&P500 (-0.7%) and Nasdaq (-1.7%) start 2024 in the red on Wall Street, following a long series of bullish weeks for the major US equity indices. The Dow Jones index, on the other hand, is stable for the time being.

The Federal Reserve's hopes of rate cuts this year have in fact enabled the Dow Jones, the S&P500 and the Nasdaq Composite to end 2023 with solid annual balance sheets, with gains of around 14%, 24% and 43% respectively.

Questioning the outlook for US equities in 2024, BNY Mellon IM warned last week that "while a good year of returns is possible, the level of uncertainty remains high".

While the risks to US equities have receded thanks to slowing inflation, it is "difficult to justify high valuations and strong earnings prospects in the current macroeconomic environment".

This first week of 2024 will see the release of statistics such as PMI indices (including the manufacturing sector on Tuesday) and the employment report for December, as well as a number of quarterly corporate publications such as that of Walgreens.

The US manufacturing sector saw the contraction of its activity accelerate in December, according to S&P Global, whose PMI index for the sector came in at 47.9 for the past month, compared with 48.2 in flash estimate and after 49.4 for November.

On the value side, Bristol Myers Squibb announced that the European Medicines Agency had validated its application for marketing authorization for its repotrectinib in forms of non-small cell lung cancer and solid tumors.

Boeing announced on Friday that its X-37B autonomous spacecraft had been launched the previous day aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, marking the start of its seventh mission.

Tesla announced that it had produced 497,989 vehicles and delivered 484,507 in Q4 2023. For the full year, the automaker announced that it had produced 1.84 million vehicles for 1.80 million deliveries, up 35% and 38% respectively on the previous year.

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