Wall Street confirmed on Friday that it’s in a bull market, but pundits are already wondering how much longer it can last. The S&P 500 gained 1% to close at an all-time high on Friday, confirming it’s in a bull market that began last October. The S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq composite are all now in positive territory for 2024 despite macro headwinds gathering globally and political uncertainty in the United States.

What gives? “The [US] stock market keeps scaling new heights as investors focus on the good and ignore the bad, no matter how bad the bad parts might look sometimes,” CNBC writes. The US economy is relatively solid, and one pundit refers to less-welcome international news (including the Houthis attacking Red Sea shipping) as “noise.”

Is it a sputtering bull market? The Financial Times is among a handful of outlet that sees clouds when it takes a step back: Tech stocks are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, whereas a month ago the rally was a much more broad-based. “A rally of almost 16% in the last two months of 2023 has ebbed in the new year,” it writes, and the S&P was dragged past the goalpost by a handful of tech stocks on Friday. Nvidia climbed 4.2%, and AMD surged 7.1%.

Don’t expect the Fed to give much support when it meets next week, Bloomberg suggests. “Investors eager for interest-rate cuts keep asking policymakers, ‘Are we there yet?’ The repeated reply so far: ‘Soon, but not quite yet.’” The business information service sees the Fed leaving rates unchanged for a fourth straight meeting when it meets 30-31 January, leaving investors to parse language about what they could expect from March onward.

Across the ocean: European shares closed down slightly on Friday, with only the FTSE100 bucking the trend (it closed flat).

EGX30

26,843

+0.3% (YTD: +7.8%)

USD (CBE)

Buy 30.83

Sell 30.96

USD at CIB

Buy 30.85

Sell 30.95

Interest rates CBE

19.25% deposit

20.25% lending

Tadawul

11,959

-0.9% (YTD: -0.1%)

ADX

9,712

-0.1% (YTD: +1.4%)

DFM

4,082

+0.7% (YTD: +0.5%)

S&P 500

4,840

+1.2% (YTD: +1.5%)

FTSE 100

7,462

+0.0% (YTD: -3.5%)

Euro Stoxx 50

4,449

-0.1% (YTD: -1.6%)

Brent crude

USD 78.56

-0.7%

Natural gas (Nymex)

USD 2.52

-6.6%

Gold

USD 2,048.60

+0.4%

BTC

USD 41,708.43

+0.3% (YTD: -1.3%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 rose 0.3% at Thursday’s close on turnover of EGP 4.4 bn (45.1% above the 90-day average). Local investors were net sellers. The index is up 7.8% YTD.

In the green: Credit Agricole (+6.0%), Palm Hills Development (+5.8%) and B Investments (+4.2%).

In the red: Telecom Egypt (-2.3%), Eastern Company (-2.0%) and Alexandria Containers and Cargo Handling (-1.8%).

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