Wall Street is facing a fourth session decline Thursday as investors showing their disappointment at the lack of concrete measures from the ECB. By late morning, the Dow 0.8% yield at 12,875.2 points and the Nasdaq Composite is crumbling from 0.3% to 2910.7 points. At the end of its Board of Governors, the ECB decided to keep rates steady.
During the press conference that followed this decision, Mario Draghi – its president – said the ECB stands ready to intervene in markets to sovereign debt. In his own words, he would not be a reactivation of the SMP last year, even though the measure would be similar to an action called ‘unconventional’.
‘After days and days of speculation about the involvement of ECB, the appointment is totally fell flat with Mario Draghi, which only adds to the uncertainty room indicating that he’ could intervene to bring Spanish and Italian rates to acceptable levels’, says one at Capital Spreads.
‘Not a word however on how to achieve this’, says the broker. ‘The purpose of Draghi is to say that the ECB is ready to intervene if (1) governments to meet a number of commitments and (2) if they involve the EFSF and / or MES,’ says Is there at Natixis.
After a wait of the Fed yesterday, the timing of the ECB goes wrong with investors, especially since the latest economic figures are nothing exciting.
The Labor Department announced this morning that the weekly unemployment benefits increased by 8,000 in the U.S. a week to week, to 365,000 during the week of July 28.
As for industrial orders, they fell 0.5% in June, according to figures from the Commerce Department, while the consensus was counting on the contrary a slight increase of 0.4%.
As for values, General Motors down 1.3% after unveiling the morning down results for the second quarter, a decline he attributes almost entirely to the dollar on the foreign exchange market.
Bristol-Myers falling more than 7% after announcing the arrest of phase II clinical trials conducted on BMS-986094, an experimental treatment against hepatitis C, citing a ‘serious security problem’.
Distributors are otherwise quite well oriented after the publication of their monthly sales figures. Target is 2.2% and Macy’s jumped 2.8%.
