Wall Street closed this Thursday in mixed territory and its main index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, rose 0.04% after it was learned that inflation in the United States rose somewhat more than expected in December. At the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones stood at 37,711 units, and the selective S&P 500 rose 0.07%, to 4,780 points.
The Nasdaq index added less than 0.01%, to 14,970 points. The inflation rate in the US abandoned its downward streak in December and prices rose three tenths year-on-year, an increase that places the indicator at 3.4% at the end of 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this Thursday.
The Federal Reserve has undertaken interest rate increases once since March 2022 to bring inflation to the 2% target and the markets anticipate that the expected cuts will arrive this year, so the data represented a setback. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond fell below 4% in reaction to the report and stood at 3.975% at the close.
The markets bet on sales towards the end of the day, leaving the main indicators close to the flat line, due to expectations for the quarterly earnings season that begins tomorrow. Four of the largest US banks will publish their annual figures this Friday, among other companies.
On the other hand, the first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) linked to bitcoin ended their first session generally with losses, especially ARK 21Shares (-6.8%) and Franklin (-6.38%), while the cryptocurrency fell to around $46,300. By sector, the declines predominated, especially in public service companies (-2.34%) and real estate (-0.96%), and only technology companies (0.44%) and energy companies (0.44%) made gains. 16%).
Among the 30 Dow Jones stocks, the falls of Verizon (-3.02%) and Walgreens (-2.63%) stood out, and the biggest gains were for Salesforce (2.74%) and Nike (2.05% ). In other markets, Texas oil fell to $72.02 per barrel, and at the close of trading, gold rose to $2.033 per ounce and the dollar remained unchanged against the euro, with an exchange rate of 1.0969.
