Wall Street ended lower on Thursday, concerned about the unexpected rise in jobless claims and mixed numbers on sales of major distributors in July, which underlined the fragility of the economic climate on the eve of the monthly employment statistics.
The Dow Jones closed at a decline of 5.45 points, or 0.05%, to 10,674.98.The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 1.43 point (-0.13%) to 1,125.81 and the Nasdaq composite 10.51 points assigned to (-0.46%) to 2293.06.
The jobless claims rose to 479,000 last week, while the market awaited them down.
This figure disappointed investors and urged them to exercise caution on the eve of the monthly report on employment in the Department of Labor, which should show a further rise in the unemployment rate in July.
"The entries do not persist in fall and this could foreshadow a bad time tomorrow," said Bruce Zaro, responsible for technical strategist for Delta Global Advisors.
Economists polled by Reuters expect for July 65.000 jobs were non-agricultural, particularly because of the end of many fixed-term contracts in the public related to the decennial census of population.The private sector, he should have created 90,000 jobs.
These uncertainties on the employment front are fears of a continued weak consumer spending, the main engine of the U.S. economy.
As for July, 28 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters have reported an increase of 2.9% over one year of their store sales, while analysts had forecast to 3.1%.
NEWS CORP SOUGHT AFTER RESULTS
The Morgan Stanley sector yielded 0.35%.
Several values of the retail sales of which have consistently been disappointed penalized, like JC Penney, which yielded 7.7%, and Dillards (-5.2%).
"We are now in a situation where dollars are increasingly scarce in the pockets of consumers, thus able to compete for these dollars is intensifying," said Lawrence Creatura, manager at Federated Clover Investment Advisers.
If July is the 11th month of improvement in retail sales according to data from Thomson Reuters, analysts point out that comparisons to last year will be less favorable over the month.
Large groups have published their results on Wednesday or Thursday experienced divergent fates: while News Corp. gained 3.6% thanks to strong performance of its cable networks and the resumption of advertising revenue from its newspapers, Viacom yielded nearly 1 %, analysts have been disappointed by the stagnation of its turnover.
Also note the sharp increase in fertilizer producers, such as CF Industries (+3.5%) and Mosaic (+1.8%) in the wake of wheat prices after the announcement of the interruption of Russian exports .
In after-hours trading just after the closing, Kraft Foods gained 2.8% in response to the publication of its quarterly. The title had ended in decline 0.3% on the New York Stock Exchange.
Axa announced Wednesday better than expected financial results for the first half despite an increase in half-mast, a performance in line with its objective to give priority to the recovery in margins rather than its development.
The second group of European insurance by market capitalization has reaffirmed its commitment to reallocate capital to its geographical margins of the most promising, even to withdraw from certain activities in mature areas.
"That does not mean that we do not have aggressive strategies in certain areas at present" said CEO Henri de Castries, and in an interview broadcast by the insurance group.
The manager has shown this strategy through the recent sale of several business lines in Britain and a willingness to invest in countries and trades in Asia, South America or Eastern Europe.
"This strategy is not as simple as when the whole world was growing at the same pace," he said.
Axa has benefited in the first half of rebounding financial markets and a better performance of its life insurance business, savings and pensions business, which offset the damage, which has suffered many natural disasters earlier this year .
NO CHANGE OF SENTIMENT
If these results are rather a good surprise, two analysts issued notes in the wake of the results fell they should not substantially change investor sentiment vis-à-vis the company.
At 09:15, the title was up 1.4% at 14.94 euros, after opening up over 2.6%, while the CAC 40 index yielded 0.2%.
Axa has lost about 10.9% since the beginning of the year, underperforming the European index DJStoxx insurance, which gained 3.16% over the same period.
The group's net profit stood at 944 million euros, a figure well above the 623 million approached by the consensus of analysts conducted by the editor of Reuters.
If the result is displayed down 28% over the same period last year, this drop is due to the supply of 1.478 billion euros spent by the group following the sale of assets United Kingdom, cited by Henri de Castries.
Without this extraordinary loss, net income would rise by 81% while revenues only increased it by 1% to 49.925 billion euros.
The decline in operating income amounted to 3% to 2.082 billion euros, superior performance under one billion to 1.884 to Reuters.
Axa has not commented on the offer of 11.5 billion dollars from the National Australia Bank on its subsidiary AXA Asia Pacific.
The subsidiary has announced a profit of 219.2 million Australian dollars for the first six months of the year, a figure in line with market expectations.
The offer, which clashed with the Australian authorities to the competition runs until August 31.
After three days of consecutive increase, Wall Street opened Friday on a tentative note, pending results of the first companies to be published next week.
A few minutes after the start of trading, the Dow Jones fell by 0.05%% to 10,133.70 points and the Standard & Poor's 500 by 0.07% to 1069.46 points while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0 , 09% to 2177.45 points.
If the optimism shown by State Street in mid-week its quarterly earnings outlook is considered auspicious by analysts for earnings season, investors prefer to wait for their actual publication, especially since there no important macroeconomic indicators on Friday.
The wait-market is reflected in low volumes and partly explains the volatility seen this week on Wall Street.
As for values, Boeing gained 0.12% after formally responded to the call for tender for the tanker to the U.S. Army.
Google took him 3.31% in favor of renewing its operating license by the Chinese authorities, a decision that allows the U.S. group to remain on the largest Internet market in the world.
Airbus announced that it garnered 131 gross orders in the first half, thanks to the mega-command of 32 A380s from Emirates announced in June at the show in Berlin.
A subsidiary of EADS, which shows 117 net orders adjusted for cancellations, said it had delivered 250 aircraft since the beginning of the year, including seven A380.
The order from Emirates, which had enabled Airbus to open with fanfare the Berlin air show, however usually less prolific ones Farnborough (England) or Le Bourget, is estimated at some 11 billion dollars based on list price purely indicative.
Airbus also won 27 orders in the first half for the single-aisle A320s and 25 A350-900.On both models, Boeing has received command of the Brazilian airline TAM also announced in Berlin for 20 A320s and five A350-900s with a total value estimated at $ 2.9 billion at list prices.
The backlog of the manufacturer revealed six cancellations A330-300 in June, including two from the Finnish airline Finnair.
Airbus did not identify the company behind the other four cancellations of orders for A330s, but industry observers have estimated that Gulf Air (Bahrain,) four units could reduce its order for 20 A330s.
According to the latest data from Airbus, DAE Capital (Dubai), who said renegotiate its orders with Airbus and Boeing, has so far not received his order of 100 Airbus.
Swiss bank UBS announced a net profit of 2.2 billion francs (1.5 billion euros) in the first quarter of 2010, after a loss of 1.98 billion francs in the same period last year.
Analysts polled by Reuters on average expected a net profit of 2.02 billion francs.
The bank had warned the markets before its general meeting that it anticipated a positive result before tax "of at least 2.5 billion francs.This post finally rises to 2.81 billion for the period under review.
On this occasion, the school had indicated that the net outflow of money in all activities had been "significantly lower than the fourth quarter of 2009.
UBS, which included a net outflow of 8 billion francs in wealth management and Swiss Bank, has reported a final amount of 8.2 billion.
The bank anticipated output of 7 billion in Wealth Management Americas and 3 billion for its asset management, and withdrawals have finally amounted to 7.2 billion and 2.6 billion respectively.
The investment bank has marked her return, earnings before taxes have tripled to 1.19 billion francs from 297 million a year earlier.The segment of trading bonds, currencies and commodities (FICC) has quintupled its revenues to 2.17 billion against 496 million a year earlier.
The equity ratio improved to 16% at end March 2010 against 15.4% at end December 2009.
"We are well positioned to achieve our medium term," said CEO Oswald J. Grübel, quoted in the statement.
UBS expects a gradual improvement of the results of asset management and asset management, adding that the net outflow of capital would be "relatively moderate in the coming time."