The U.S. stock markets have recently experienced six consecutive weeks of gains, taking a breather. The Dow Jones opened down 0.07% and the Nasdaq 100 0.11%.
On Monday, the Dow Jones gleaned 0.08% to increase the threshold highly symbolic 11 000 points for the first time since September 2008.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro continues to strengthen against the dollar, after surging the day before with the announcement of details of the rescue plan for Greece. In early afternoon, the European currency was worth 1.3614 dollars against 1.3585 dollars in morning.
Wave of publications this week
On the macroeconomic front, the U.S. trade deficit widened in February to 39.70 billion dollars.The next week will be marked by several important indicators such as the index of consumer prices, retail sales for the month of March, industrial production, housing starts and the first estimate of the confidence index, Reuters Michigan. The markets will also follow the hearing of Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday and will monitor closely developments in the case of the Greek debt.
The week will also be crucial for the U.S. markets with the opening ball of the quarterly results. As usual, the aluminum giant Alcoa, which gave the start of the season publications, Monday after the market closes. The U.S. producer of aluminum remained in the red in the first quarter, however, divided more than double its loss a year.Alcoa recorded a net loss after minority interests of 201 million over the first three months of the year, against a deficit of $ 497 million a year earlier.
Today, the computer chip manufacturer Intel to follow. The next week will be hosted by quarterly results from Google, General Electric still banks JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Always on the side of values, yesterday, the U.S. oil group ConocoPhillips has announced the sale of its Chinese Sinopec stake in Canadian oil sands project Syncrude for $ 4.65 billion (3.42 billion euros) . This is one of the largest investments ever made by China in North America.
The manufacturer of PDAs and mobile phones Palm, would seek a buyer.Bloomberg said the investment bank Goldman Sachs and Qatalyst Partners were commissioned to find a buyer to the manufacturer of smartphones in serious financial trouble. Action Palm and jumped over 17% Monday to the New York Stock Exchange.
- Wall Street ends with a small increase
- Hewlett-Packard buys Palm 1.2 billion
- Soybeans, corn and wheat: the winners of the week
- Wall Street should stay subdued despite GDP
- The CAC 40 rose slightly due