New York, Aug 26 – Wall Street opened this Friday on mixed terrain and its main indicator, the Dow Jones Industrials, rose a slight 0.10%, while investors impatiently await Jerome Powell’s speech today, President of the Federal Reserve (Fed), in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Ten minutes after the session began on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones added 33.85 points, to 33,325.63, while the selective S&P 500 lost a slight 0.08% or 3.18 units, to 4,195, 94.
For its part, the Nasdaq market composite index, which brings together the main technology companies, fell 0.15% or 18.52 integers, to 12,620.74.
The Fed chairman will speak on the outlook for the economy, inflation and interest rate policy at 10 a.m. local time (2 p.m. GMT).
Investors are looking for clues as to how the central bank will achieve its goal of lowering inflation while minimizing the risks of a deep recession.
Fed officials raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage point at each of their last two meetings, most recently in July, to a range between 2.25% and 2.5%.
At its meeting in late September, the Fed is expected to raise rates, the question being whether it will do so by 0.5 percentage point or 0.75 point.
According to experts, Powell is not expected to decline either option in his speech today, as the central bank has said it will be guided in making this decision by upcoming data on inflation, economic growth and the job.
Also speaking at the Jackson Hole symposium on Saturday is Isabel Schnabel, a member of the board of the European Central Bank.
By sectors, the decreases in communications (-0.52%) and real estate (-0.31%) stood out, while the greatest gains were for financials (0.22) and public services (0.17 %).
Among the 30 Dow Jones listed companies, the biggest losses were for International Business Machines (-0.61%) and Intel (-0.46%); while at the other extreme the biggest gains were for Boeing (0.94%) and JPMorgan (0.75%).
In other markets, Texas oil fell to $91.92 a barrel, the 10-year US Treasury bond yield rose to 3.046%, gold rose to $1,764.40 an ounce and the dollar lost ground against the euro. , with a change of 1.0067.