© Reuters. WALL STREET OPENS DOWN
by Sruthi Shankar
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street opened down on Monday for the first session of the second quarter after a long easter weekend, hampered by the return of worries about trade tensions and the lingering doubts about technology stocks.
The Dow Jones has ceded 69,28 points in early trade to be of 0.29% to 24.033,83 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500, wider, fell by 10.53 to points (-0,4%) 2.630,34 points, and the Nasdaq Composite yields 49,70 points (-0,7%)7.013,74 points.
China announced on Sunday evening the application of the rights of an additional duty of up to 25% on 128 u.s. products, including frozen pork, wine, and certain fruits, in response to the decision of the United States to tax the imports of aluminum and steel.
The United States is about to impose tariffs on more than $ 50 billion of chinese goods.
“This will stoke the fears of trade war and protectionism. The market really does not like this,” said Andre Bakhos of New Vines Capital.
The dollar has suffered from this back to the forefront of the trade tensions, and its index against a basket of other major currencies yield of 0.25%. It has returned about 0.6% last week but down more than 2% in the first three months of the year, its fifth consecutive quarter of decline. The euro was almost stable against the u.s. currency, gangant 0.05% to 1,2326 dollar.
Gold, on the other hand, has put an end to three consecutive sessions of decline, and progresses from 0.76% to 1.334,09 dollars per ounce.
The oil flows back again from under the threshold of 70 dollars per barrel. The contract of June on the Brent is trading at 68,76 dollar (-0,84%) and the light crude to u.s. West Texas Intermediate, WTI) to (64,16 dollars (-1,17%).
“A series of economic indicators will be published this week, which could help stabilize the market sentiment although the trade tensions between China and the United States as well as other geopolitical risks are still present”, said Koji Fukaya of FPG Securities
In addition to the ISM manufacturing index for the month of march published on Monday at 14: 00 GMT, are expected this week services on Wednesday and employment numbers Friday.
Investors also count on a promising harvest of results for the first quarter to regain a bit of optimism after a first quarter during which the Dow Jones index surrendered 2.5% and the S&P 500 1.2%, their worst quarterly performance in more than two years.
TESLA (NASDAQ:TSLA) DROPS AGAIN
The values, the technologies remain under pressure : their sectoral index has opened down 0.4%, after having accused the last month, its worst performance in almost two years.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has started to decline nearly 2% after that Donald Trump was taken Saturday to the number one in the world of online distribution, blaming him for the benefit of prices that are too advantageous on the part of the us postal service and do not pay enough taxes.
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) is down 1% still penalized by a scandal over the use of personal data, of which the one of the few Wall Street analysts to the sale on the value estimated Monday that it could lead to a more marked decline than expected in the turnover of the social network in the second half, justifying a decrease in its target price from 152 to 138 dollars.
The electric car-maker Tesla loses more than 4.5% in early trade after dropping 12% last week on concerns about the pace of production of its sedan Model 3 in the first quarter and after the announcement by us authorities of road safety that they were investigating an accident that took place on 23 march in California involving a vehicle Model X autopilot.
Humana earns almost 5.5%, while sources to the fact of the record reported Thursday discussions with Walmart (NYSE:WMT) in view of a covenant relationship between the health insurer and the retail giant.
In the fields of biotech, Alkermes unscrewed by more than 20% after it announced that the u.s. health authorities (FDA) rejected its application for approval for its experimental treatment of depression.
On the other hand, MediciNova jumped by nearly 24% on positive results from a study on its treatment for fatty liver disease. Compugen takes nearly 10% after it announced a licensing agreement with MedImmune, a subsidiary of the laboratory AstraZeneca (LON:AZN), for the development of antibodies in the treatment of cancer.
(Marc Joanny for French service)
