Citing stable growth in employment, household spending and capital investments, the Fed said it expects the economy to expand at a moderate pace and the labour market to remain strong in 2018.
The Fed also added that the Federal Commission for Open Markets has unanimously approved Powell as Yellen’s successor, who will take office on 3 February. Powell, who was part of the Fed and worked together with Yellen for several years, was nominated by President Donald Trump and was endorsed by the American Senate.
Strong corporate reports presented companies for the fourth quarter on both sides of the ocean. In addition to the IT sector, the energy companies were well represented as a result of the increase in oil prices and also the companies in the arms business because of the increased budget of the Pentagon and global conflicts during the year.
In the fourth quarter, Facebook’s net profit rose to $4.27 billion, or $1.44 per share, from $3.56 billion, or $1.21 per share, a year earlier. Total revenues rose by 47% to $12,97 billion and exceeded the forecast of $12.55 billion given by analysts.
Facebook added that at the end of last year, the time spent by users on its platform fell to about 50 million hours a day - that is, members of the social network spent 5% less time in it. As a result of the news, the company’s stock price fell by more than 4 percent during post-borrowing trade. But shortly after that, the shares recovered and even rose by 1.3 percent.
Chief Operating Officer Cheryl Sandberg told analysts that recent changes will reduce disinformation on Facebook and can lead to “more opportunities for monetization.”
Boeing shares rose more than 5% in Wall Street’s trading session on Wednesday after the company reported its fourth-quarter results, which exceeded analyst’s expectations. For the fourth quarter ending December 31st, the profits from Boeing’s main activity doubled to $4.80 per share at $2.47 a year earlier. The results of the company are supported by the increased production of airplanes and the new tax law in the US.
Microsoft surpassed Wall Street’s profit forecast, supported by the growth of its computing cloud business, but faced the payment of a one-off amount of $13.8 billion in tax changes in the United States.
This was the tenth consecutive quarter with more than 90% increase in revenue from the main cloud service Azure, which directly competes with Amazon’s Amazon Web Services.com.
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