US open: Wall Street trades mixed after raft of economic data

By Sharecast News

Sharecast News | 26 Jan, 2023

Updated : 16:27

23:29 24/12/24

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Wall Street's main market indices gave up early gains and were last trading around the unchanged mark following the release of a barrage of economic data.

At the headline level, reports for fourth quarter gross domestic product, jobless claims, durable goods orders and new home sales all came in at least slightly better than expected.

Yet the details of those reports arguably pointed to just the opposite with the possible exception of the jobless claims figures, although some economists believed those were set to soon head higher.

Against that backdrop, as of 1607 GMT the Dow Jones Industrials was slipping by 0.25% to 33,658.67, the S&P 500 was up by 0.04% at 4,017.92 and the Nasdaq Composite was ahead by 0.37% to 11,355.38.

Worth noting, boosting the latter was a 9% pop in shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla.

The US dollar spot index nevertheless did catch a bid, rising by 0.51% to 102.16, and the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield had ticked up by four basis points to 3.504%.

Easing recession fears, as per some market commentary, US gross domestic product expanded at an annualised rate of 2.9% over the last three months of 2022.

That was better than the 2.8% gain anticipated by economists.

But strip out a 1.5 percentage point contribution from inventory building and 0.6 points from foreign trade - both of which were not sustainable - and not much was left, said Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

The initial jobless claims figures did surprise again to the downside, but because analysts overlooked the seasonal patterns and layoff announcements "point unambiguously to much higher claims in Q2," Shepherdson added.

Durable goods orders literally soared in December, but only due to rocketing orders for civilian aircraft which were notoriously volatile.

New home sales edged past forecasts during the same month, but that was offset by downwards revisions to the numbers for the preceding three months.

Perhaps key among all the noise, Shepherdson noted that the price data contained in Thursday's GDP report was consistent with an in-line reading for the key personal consumption expenditures price deflator data due out the next day.

Dow Jones - Risers

Chevron Corp. (CVX) $185.96 3.84%
Salesforce.Com Inc. (CRM) $160.94 3.05%
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $245.02 1.83%
Apple Inc. (AAPL) $143.54 1.18%
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) $353.03 0.97%
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) $48.40 0.88%
Walt Disney Co. (DIS) $108.70 0.54%
Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) $259.78 0.52%
Walmart Inc. (WMT) $143.04 0.49%
Visa Inc. (V) $225.86 0.43%