Wall Street's solid rebound makes all the difference: thanks to Friday's gains, the US indices are out of the red, and are on course for a second week of gains.

The Dow Jones rebounded by +1.2% (weekly gain: +1.1%), the S&P500 was up by the same amount but only gained 0.55% weekly, the Nasdaq soared by +2% but owed much of its outperformance to Apple stock alone, with its +6% and, above all, more than $27 billion in transactions (153.5 million shares traded).
On Thursday, Apple announced the most titanic share buyback plan in the history of capitalism ($110 billion).

The Nasdaq also benefited from gains by Nvidia +3.2%, Broadcom +3.2%, AMD +3%, Marvell and LAM Research +2.8%, Netflix +2.5%, Meta +2.3%, Microsoft +2.2%, Micron +2.1% from Apple after the announcement of the most titanic share buyback plan in the history of capitalism ($110 billion).

The US indices once again demonstrate that 'bad news is good news' when the main issue is once again the prospect of monetary easing by the FED (as early as September) and not the health of the US economy.
The NFP (employment report) came in 30% below expectations: the US economy generated just 175.000 non-farm jobs in April, according to the Labor Department, well below market expectations, which averaged around 250,000.

The unemployment rate rose by 0.1 points to 3.9%, where economists were hoping for stability at 3.8%, while the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.7%, and average hourly earnings rose at an annual rate of 3.9%.

In addition, non-agricultural job creations for the previous two months were revised, from 270,000 to 236,000 for February and from 303,000 to 315,000 for March, representing a total revision balance of -22,000 for these two months.

In addition, growth in the US private sector slowed less than initially estimated in April, according to the S&P Global composite PMI index, which came in at 51.3 on balance, against a flash estimate of 50.9, and after 52.1 for the previous month (traders will note that this is a decline of -0.8 over 1 month, which points to a slowdown).

Finally, activity in the US service sector plunged back into contraction in April, for the first time since the end of 2022, according to the results of the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) monthly survey of purchasing managers.

After 15 consecutive months of growth, the ISM index measuring the evolution of the tertiary sector dipped to 49.4 last month, falling back below the 50-point threshold indicating a downturn in activity, compared with 51.4 in March.
Bond markets applauded the day's 'weaker than expected' US figures, with the '10-yr' down 7pts to 4.501% (vs. 4.70% at the start of the week), the '2-yr' erasing -7pts to 4.806% (vs. 5.00% last Friday).
In Europ830% respectively.
The looming slowdown continues to weigh on the oil sector, with a barrel of WTI losing a further 1.4% to $78, i.e. -6.8% over the week.

The Dollar is clearly weakened, down -0.4%, with the Euro rising symmetrically to $1.0770.

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