With mixed signs and far from the lows of the day, the Wall, with a look at Ukraine

The publication of the minutes from the last meeting of the Federal Reserve almost led to the “extinction” of the initial, high losses of Wall Street, with the geopolitical concerns, however, remaining “weight” and not allowing investors to achieve anything better than just moving away. of indices from their intra-conference lows.

Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on January 25-26 confirmed the Fed’s intention to tighten its monetary policy more aggressively by raising interest rates and significantly lowering its balance sheet – which grew in favor of in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic – in order to curb the galloping inflation that is moving close to the high of 40 years.

The FOMC’s “aggressive tone” did not surprise Wall Street, which has largely discounted the Fed’s next moves; before threatening to derail economic growth.

However, geopolitical concerns about developments on the Russian-Ukrainian border, which returned to the forefront today after yesterday’s break that led key indicators to close with gains, restored strong volatility on the board and eliminated investor sentiment.

Yesterday’s cautious optimism sparked by reports of the withdrawal of some Russian troops from the border with Ukraine seems to be fading today, after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters that “they have not seen the withdrawal” of Russian troops. of the Alliance stressed that “what we see is that they are increasing the number of troops and more forces are on the way”.

It is recalled that Russia announced earlier today that more troops and military equipment will return to their bases after the completion of the planned exercises.

Fears of a possible Russian invasion were rekindled today by statements by State Department spokesman Ned Price, who warned that Russian officials were “planting” narratives in the press that could be used as a pretext for false allegations.

During a briefing for reporters, Price said Washington was concerned about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim that “genocide” was being committed in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. He also said that allegations that the United States and Ukraine were developing biological or chemical weapons to use in the region were “completely false”.

Indicators – statistics

In the midst of this climate, the key indicators of Wall Street closed with mixed signs, far from the lows of the day, with the S&P 500 even securing the positive sign.

In particular, the broader S&P 500, although for most of the session moved in a negative direction, after the publication of the Fed minutes reacted and finally managed to “erase” its initial losses and close with small gains of 0, 11% at 4,476.13 points.

The Dow Jones industrial average, although intra-conference “lost” more than 300 points, after a few sign exchanges finally closed with a slight drop of 55 points or 0.16%, reaching 34,934.27 points.

The technology Nasdaq also ended the day with small losses of 0.11%, which closed at 14,124.09 units, although intra-conference it was below the barrier of 14,000 units, recording losses of up to almost 1.5%.

Of the 30 shares of the blue chips index, 13 closed with gains and 17 with losses. The biggest gains were recorded by the securities of Walt Disney (+ 1.05%), Procter & Gamble (0.76%) and Nike (0.63%), while the highest losses were recorded by the shares of Salesforce (-1.17% ), 3M (-1.09%) and Goldman Sachs (-1.07%).

Macro

Support for the indicators, but without being able to offset concerns about geopolitical tensions, provided the best-of-expected economic data released in the US.

It is noted that retail sales in January marked a “jump”, after the “dive” recorded at the end of 2021 due to the rapid spread of the micron mutation. In particular, the value of retail sales increased by 3.8% in January after falling by 2.5% in December, according to data released today by the US Department of Commerce. The rise in January is the largest in the last ten months, while the data for December were revised downwards from the initial measurement for a fall of 1.9%.

Industrial production also improved further last month, with US factories and manufacturing companies gradually overcoming problems with shortages in global supply chains.

In particular, manufacturing production increased by 0.2% after the revised fall of 0.1% in December, as announced today by the Federal Reserve. Compared to January 2021, production increased by 2.5%.

Total industrial production, which includes the mining sector and production by utilities, climbed 1.4% in January after falling 0.1% the previous month.

The average estimates of analysts in a Bloomberg poll spoke of an increase in manufacturing production by 0.2% and total industrial production by 0.5%.