Wall Street: progressing with the "fusacqs", while waiting the Fed

Wall Street returns to the green on Tuesday , with a news always expanded of mergers and acquisitions dominated by Texas Instruments agreement / National Semiconductor and the deal Procter & Gamble / Diamond Foods. Apple hesitates New York Stock Exchange, on arbitrations of managers resulting from its lower weighting in the Nasdaq 100. The DJIA is gaining 0.25% to 12,431 pts, while the Nasdaq is 0.51% at 2,803 points.

The ISM index of U.S services for the month of March 2011 came out fairly well below the consensus at 57.3 against 59.8 expected and 59.7 a month earlier. The indicator therefore reflects an unexpected slowdown in business growth in services to the U.S. last month. However, the index remains on the 50 bar and therefore continues to indicate expansion.

The index of activity / production fell to 59.7 in March from 66.9 in February. The indicator for new orders fell to 64.1, against 64.4. The employment index fell to 53.7, against 55.6 in February. The index fell to 72.1 against 73.3.

About 20 hours, the Fed will release minutes from its latest monetary policy meeting, when operators are trying to evaluate the timing of a potential tightening in a context of recovery and higher inflation.

The Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, has reaffirmed yesterday that ,according to hem , the current surge in prices, linked to higher commodity prices ,should not last: "I think the rise in the inflation will be transitory. Our view at this stage is that in the medium term, inflation will still be a little weak, "he said in a speech.

However, the officer added that the Fed will "monitor closely" inflation and inflation expectations in order to act quickly, if necessary, suggesting that the central bank will not hesitate to raise rates (currently set between 0% and 0.2%) if inflation continues to climb ... Observations that have prompted an uptick in the dollar, which returns about 0.2% against the Euro this morning at $ 1.4195 per 1 Euro.

However, the tone of Bernanke's speech suggests that the Fed has no plans to discontinue its quantitative easing program (QE2), which involves buying $ 600 billion in assets (government bonds particular) on the market by June ... Some voices were raised in recent days to request a suspension of the program given the recovery of the U.S. economy and inflationary risks that entails.