A roundup of Wednesday’s stock market results from across the region
🌎 Latin American markets close lower:
Following Tuesday’s plunge, after a strong streak of gains, Argentina’s Merval index (MERVAL) closed the day down for the second consecutive session, registering a 1.62% decline, the sharpest drop on Latin American stock markets on Wednesday.
According to the Rava Bursátil portal, the shares which fell the most during the day were Cresud (CRED), which fell by 4.57%; YPF (YPF), which fell by 3.34%; Central Puerto (CEPU), which recorded a fall of 2.30%; and Transportadora Gas del Sur (TGSU2), which recorded a negative variation of 2.22% at the close of the session.
Among some milestones in the local Argentinean market, Fernando Staropoli, Rava’s account executive, pointed out that the World Bank will deliver 900 million dollars in three new credits to expand access to energy and infrastructure works; while the Inter-American Development Bank approved a new credit line for 400 million dollars shared between Argentina and Uruguay for the Salto Grande Hydroelectric Complex.
Mexico’s S&P/BMV IPC (MEXBOL) fell 0.87%, Although it did not completely erase the gains of the previous session. The sectors with the sharpest declines were non-basic consumer goods (-2.01%), materials (-1.13%) and basic consumer goods (-1.09%).
Meanwhile, the shares that fell the most were those of Gentera SAB de CV (GENTERA*), leaving behind the previous gains, after registering a drop of 2.65%, followed by shares of Alsea SAB (ALSEA*), which fell 2.64%.
Brazil’s Ibovespa (IBOV) fell 0.72% at the end of the session, also marking a second consecutive session; while the S&P/BVL Peru’s index (SPBLPGPT) also fell again, closing 0.25% lower.
🗽On Wall Street:
Wall Street traders took Jerome Powell’s hawkish signals in stride, with bond yields down and stocks fluctuating in one of the last few days of a quarter that saw a blistering artificial-intelligence rally.
The tug of war within the S&P 500′s most-influential group dictated trading Wednesday, with a slide in chipmakers offsetting an advance in tech megacaps like Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
After the closing bell, Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. led gains in financial companies as the biggest lenders passed the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test, clearing the way for payouts. Micron Technology Inc. jumped on an upbeat forecast.
“Quarter-end positioning could drive volatility through the end of the week,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide. “Investors are increasingly pricing in a soft landing. A re-acceleration in earnings will be required to drive the next phase of the market move.”
Swap market bets on further tightening barely budged after the Fed’s chief downplayed the odds of a recession while signaling officials could hike for two straight meetings, if needed.
‘Mega force’
Mutual funds bought stocks for the first time since February in the past month as fear of missing out outweighed economic concerns, according to Barclays Plc strategists.
“FOMO has seen frustrated bears turning into reluctant bulls,” the strategists led by Emmanuel Cau wrote. “It is noteworthy that equities were being bought despite the negative economic and market outlook” of most investors.
Meantime, BlackRock Inc. introduced a bullish call on AI amid a rally that’s putting the Nasdaq 100 on pace for its best-ever first half of a year.
“A mega force like AI can be a big driver of returns even when the macro environment is not your friend,” wrote strategists including Jean Boivin, Wei Li and Vivek Paul. “A longer-term investor can look past some of the near-term pain.”
In other corporate news, General Mills Inc. fell after the food producer gave a guidance that suggests price hikes will no longer make up for slowing sales as inflation-weary shoppers cut back on spending. Netflix Inc. gained as Oppenheimer raised its price target.
Elsewhere, oil rose after a US government report showed nationwide stockpiles fell the most in two months, outpacing market expectations.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.4%, the euro fell 0.4% to $1.0915, the British pound fell 0.8% to $1.2641 and the Japanese yen fell 0.2% to 144.43 per dollar.
🍝 For the dinner table debate:
The most recent edition of the ‘QS World University Rankings 2024′ ranked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the best university in the world, a place it also occupied the previous year.
The global ‘Top 5′ is completed by the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Stanford, in that order. These universities have remained at the top of the ranking in recent years, exchanging the top places in each edition.
For this edition, the global ranking of universities and colleges included in their measurements new indicators that reflect the priority of students when choosing their higher education institution: sustainability, employability of graduates and international research collaborations.
Under this updated methodology, three universities in Latin America entered the global ‘Top 100′ for the first time; a result that compares to only one new Latin American university that had reached that number in the last two editions, which was the University of Buenos Aires (UBA).
For last year’s ranking there are as many as 15 universities from the region that stand out in the complete list and are positioned as the best in the region, with the University of Sao Paulo in first place and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in second place.
In the top 100 are four Brazilian universities, three Colombian and three Chilean universities.
Paola Villar S., a content producer at Bloomberg Línea, and Rita Nazareth of Bloomberg News, contributed to this story.