The U.S. major indxes ended mixed on Friday. The long-awaited speeches by Janet Yellen and ECB President Mario Draghi in Jackson Hole did not produce fireworks. The Dow Jones industrial index rose by 0.14% amid the hopes that the tax reform proposed by President Trump will be implemented.
Thus, the leading US index managed to finish the promotion week, interrupting its 3-week negative performance. The S & P 500 rose 0.17% to 2 443.05 points, while the Nasdaq reported a slight decline of 5.68 points to 6 265.64. Investors actually looked out for what Yellen and Draghi were going to say all week. However, hopes for future monetary policy continued.
“The worry still remains about the 10-year (benchmark Treasury note) rate, still below 2.2 percent,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago. “That is kind of a concern and it doesn’t surprise me you are starting to see stocks hang in there only because everybody is searching for yield.”
“If anything, both with Draghi and Yellen, the big fear from investors was a more hawkish stance on monetary policy,” said Jeffrey Cleveland, chief economist at Payden & Rygel in Los Angeles. “Those fears were overblown. You didn’t have that hawkish surprise.”
Adamas Pharmaceuticals appeared in the headlines, with a sharp gain of 40 percent. The US FDA approved an anti-parkinson drug.
Retail chain Ulta Beauty, on the other hand, declined by 9 percent due to disappointing sales growth in the past quarter.
Twitter ended more than 1 percent lower, after a valuation by an analyst from Jefferies.
Oil finished trading Friday with a slight increase. Futures of US light crude rose 44 cents to 47.87 dollars a barrel. Brent crude oil rose 37 cents to $ 52.41. Despite the positive performance, black gold ended the week with a fall. This was the fourth consecutive negative week for oil futures.
Hurricane Harvey forced two oil refineries in Texas to stop work due to the storm preparation operations. Flint Hills Resources, producing about 300,000 barrels a day, and the other major Texas refinery, Citgo Petroleum, with a daily production of 157,000 barrels, stopped working because of the growing danger of hurricane. Nearly 45% of oil refineries and around 51% of natural gas processing facilities are located near coastal areas.
