Wall Street termine en hausse, entre résultats d’entreprises et intelligence artificielle

La Bourse de New York a terminé en hausse mercredi, portée à la fois par des résultats d’entreprises globalement meilleurs qu’attendu, ainsi que par les annonces de Donald Trump d’investissement massifs dans l’intelligence artificielle (IA).Le Dow Jones a gagné 0,30%, l’indice Nasdaq a bondi de 1,28% et l’indice élargi S&P 500 a progressé de 0,61%.”Nous continuons à observer une dynamique très similaire à celle de la semaine dernière au cours des deux premiers jours de cette semaine”, a commenté auprès de l’AFP Art Hogan, de B. Riley Wealth Management. Le mouvement haussier est dû à “une combinaison de facteurs, mais tous semblent positifs”, a-t-il ajouté. En premier lieu, la place américaine a très bien accueilli une volée de résultats d’entreprises, qui “continuent d’être supérieurs aux prévisions”, a noté M. Hogan.”Les actions atteignent de nouveaux sommets, les investisseurs se réjouissant”, notamment, “des bons résultats des entreprises américaines”, a observé dans une note José Torres, d’Interactive Brokers.L’humeur optimiste du marché était aussi liée à l’annonce par Donald Trump d’un nouveau projet d’intelligence artificielle (IA), baptisé “Stargate”, comprenant des investissements d'”au moins 500 milliards de dollars” dans des infrastructures d’IA aux Etats-Unis.Le projet, présenté par M. Trump à la Maison Blanche, réunira le spécialiste du “cloud” Oracle (+6,75%), le géant japonais des investissements SoftBank (+10,61% à la clôture à Tokyo), et la start-up d’IA générative OpenAI.Le patron de SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, a précisé que la coentreprise allait “commencer à déployer immédiatement 100 milliards de dollars”, avec l’objectif d’atteindre un total de 500 sur quatre ans.”L’engouement pour les valeurs technologiques a été ravivé par la conversation d’aujourd’hui autour de Stargate”, a souligné Art Hogan.Le géant des semi-conducteurs Nvidia a profité de cette annonce, bondissant de 4,42%, de même que Microsoft (+4,15%).”L’activité calme” sur le marché obligataire a également soulagé les investisseurs, selon Patrick O’Hare, de Briefing.com. Le rendement des emprunts d’Etat américains à dix ans s’est établi à 4,61% contre 4,56% la veille en clôture. “Il s’est stabilisé après avoir flirté avec les 5%” la semaine passée, “redescendant à un niveau plus sûr”, a avancé M. Hogan.Au tableau des valeurs, la plateforme de streaming Netflix s’est envolé mercredi (+9,69%) après avoir annoncé la veille des résultats légèrement meilleurs qu’attendu, avec près de 19 millions de nouveaux abonnements gagnés pendant le quatrième trimestre 2024.Autre valeur en hausse grâce à ses résultats, le géant américain des produits ménagers et d’hygiène Procter & Gamble (P&G) a clôturé à 1,87% mercredi, après avoir publié des résultats au-dessus des attentes pour le deuxième trimestre de son exercice décalé. Le propriétaire de Febreze, Gilette et Pampers a notamment annoncé un bénéfice net en hausse de 33%, à 4,65 milliards de dollars.GE Vernova, qui rassemble les anciennes activités énergétiques du conglomérat General Electric, a également gagné du terrain (+2,67%), malgré un bénéfice net en deçà des attentes au quatrième trimestre 2024. En revanche, le géant pharmaceutique Johnson & Johnson (-1,94%) a terminé dans le rouge, malgré des résultats au-dessus des attentes des analystes.Les résultats de la compagnie aérienne American Airlines ou encore du groupe GE Aerospace sont attendus jeudi.

Fear abounds as M23 fighters close in on DR Congo’s GomaWed, 22 Jan 2025 21:21:21 GMT

Luggage on their backs, they trudged all Wednesday morning along the road leading to downtown Goma, fleeing the advancing fighters in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.Streams of displaced people have flocked from Minova, a port city the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has already captured as it conquers swathes of territory at the expense of …

Fear abounds as M23 fighters close in on DR Congo’s GomaWed, 22 Jan 2025 21:21:21 GMT Read More »

Musk bashes Trump-backed AI mega project

Tech titan Elon Musk cast doubt Wednesday on a $500 billion AI project announced by US President Donald Trump, saying the money promised for the investment actually wasn’t there.The comments marked a rare instance of a split between the world’s richest man and Trump, with Musk playing a key role in the newly installed administration after spending $270 million on the election campaign.In his first full day in the White House, Trump on Tuesday announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.Trump said the venture, called Stargate, “will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”But in a post on his social media platform X, Musk said the main investors “don’t actually have the money.””SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk added in a subsequent post.- ‘Wrong’ -Musk’s swipe could be particularly targeted at OpenAI, the world’s leading AI startup that Musk helped found before leaving in 2018.The Tesla boss and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who was present at the White House on Tuesday, have been mired in a serious feud with Musk opening repeated lawsuits against the company behind ChatGPT.”Wrong, as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already under way?” Altman replied to Musk on X.”This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put (country) first,” he added.OpenAI is one of the world’s highest valued startups but loses money on the high costs of turning out its expensive technology.According to the Wall Street Journal, cloud giant Oracle, which is also involved, has about $11 billion in cash and securities. SoftBank has roughly $30 billion of cash on hand.”The American people should take President Trump and those CEOs words for it. These investments are coming to our great country and American jobs are coming along with them,” Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.The Stargate project is committed to invest an initial $100 billion in the project, and up to $500 billion over the next four years.Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused state fund MGX and Oracle are also providing funding for the project, while SoftBank-owned Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia will be technology partners.According to the companies, the project is initially building a data center operation in Texas, where construction is already underway.Ahead of taking office, Trump this month unveiled a $20 billion Emirati investment in US data centers, as well as a previous investment pledge from SoftBank.

Musk seeks Trump pardon for ‘Bitcoin Jesus,’ charged with fraud

Elon Musk said Tuesday he was exploring a presidential pardon for “Bitcoin Jesus,” who was arrested last year on fraud and tax evasion charges, after applauding Donald Trump for exonerating the founder of a dark web drug marketplace.In a sign of the tech billionaire’s influence over the new US administration, Musk said he was “honored to be in the Oval Office” when Trump granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the man behind the “Silk Road” platform that facilitated the sale of illegal narcotics using cryptocurrency.Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” was sentenced to two life terms in prison after being convicted of charges including conspiracy to distribute narcotics, money laundering and computer hacking.The FBI described Silk Road as a “digital bazaar for illegal goods and services” that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, as well as commissions in bitcoin.Prosecutors also alleged that Ulbricht solicited six murders-for-hire.Trump on Tuesday said he called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her that he had granted him an unconditional pardon, honoring a pledge he made during last year’s presidential campaign, while slamming the “scum” who prosecuted him.Musk, a confidant of Trump, hinted that Roger Ver, a former California resident who calls himself “Bitcoin Jesus,” could be next.The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX wrote on his platform X that pardoning him was up to Trump, but he had “asked whether this is possible.”The Bitcoin investor and promoter was arrested in Spain last April based on US criminal charges including fraud and evading capital gains taxes. The Department of Justice’s indictment claimed that Ver — who had renounced his US citizenship and became a citizen of the Caribbean island of St. Kitts — sold tens of thousands of bitcoins on cryptocurrency exchanges for around $240 million in cash in 2017.He did not report his gains, losing the US Treasury $48 million in tax money, the indictment said.The United States has sought Ver’s extradition to stand trial in the country.There was no immediate comment from Trump about Ver.Trump has courted his conservative base that catapulted him to power by pardoning his supporters and targeting opponents in a shock-and-awe start to his second presidency. Hours after being sworn in on Monday, Trump granted pardons to more than 1,500 people who stormed the US Capitol in 2021 including those convicted of assaulting police officers.Musk shares Trump’s hard-right politics and put millions of dollars into supporting his presidential campaign.Trump has tapped Musk to lead an advisory commission aiming to slash federal spending and bureaucracy, which while dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will not be an official US agency.

Elephants are not people, US judges say

A bid to get five elephants released from a US zoo has failed after judges ruled the animals are not people so laws on unlawful imprisonment do not apply.Animal rights campaigners acting on behalf of elderly African elephants Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo wanted a court to free them from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado.The Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) said the creatures should be moved instead to an elephant sanctuary.But Colorado’s supreme court on Tuesday ruled that only people are covered by the state’s habeas corpus laws.”Colorado’s habeas statute only applies to persons, and not to nonhuman animals, no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be,” a panel of judges ruled.”It bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically.”Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person… and because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”NRP has previously failed in legal efforts to get an elephant named Happy freed from a New York zoo, when another court agreed that the animal was not human.Habeas corpus is a fundamental principle in legal systems around the world, which holds that no person can be imprisoned illegally.It has its origins in Magna Carta, a royal charter agreed in 1215 by King John of England, a document widely seen as the first brake on the absolute monarchies dominant in medieval Europe.