Earnings reports dominated the sentiment on all three Wall Street indices, with the Dow Jones gaining 104 points. Yet, the S&P and Nasdaq edged lower despite Microsoft’s performance on a quarterly basis coming in above market expectations underpinned by its cloud business. S&P GLOBAL EUROZONE MANUFACTURING PMI (Jan.) rose to 48.8 (vs. previous period: 47.8 & forecast: 48.5), indicating a softer contraction in manufacturing activity. Meanwhile, the S&P GLOBAL EUROZONE SERVICES PMI (Jan.) rose to 50.7 (vs previous month: 49.8 & forecast: 50.2), indicating the first month of expansion in services activity since last July, supported by the technology, health and medicine, as well as industrial services sectors. Last but not least, US MANUFACTURING PMI (Jan.) rose to 46.8 (from the previous period: 46.2 & forecast: 46); indicating business expansion is improving, bringing optimism for the economic situation this year.
JCI halted by a minor bullish — this trend stands precisely at the mid-term trendline resistance around 6900 (High: 6906), with a candle similar to Evening Star, an early sign for a reversal trend. Pullback or Consolidation commonly happens to test Support at 6840/6765-6725. Overall, JCI is still moving Sideways-Downtrend within the Falling Wedge pattern. However, a positive catalyst came from the Rupiah exchange rate at 14887.5/USD, the strongest position since August 2022. The Rupiah may still be able to continue its strengthening towards Support: 14800/USD supported by Consensus Economics survey sentiment, which shows Europe has a chance to avoid recession. NHKSI RESEARCH advises the investors/traders/ to keep waiting for a solid resistance breakout (on a closing position basis) before deciding to average up the portfolio, as this 6900-6960 resistance is crucial to free JCI towards its psychological TARGET level of 7000.
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