Around 2:30 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones gained 1.42%, the Nasdaq index, with a strong technological composition, took 1.77% and the broader S&P 500 index advanced by 1.48%.

"It's been a good week so far," Briefing.com's Patrick O'Hare commented in a note, "and we haven't had this for two months."

"The market is relieved that there were no bad surprises in the minutes of the last Fed meeting," said Karl Haeling of the LBBW bank.

While central bankers have mentioned several additional hikes of half a point in the Fed's key rate at the next meetings, none of them mentioned a more marked increase, of three quarters of a point.

Traders now estimate a more than 66% chance that the institution will slow the pace of its tightening from September, up from less than 40% just a week ago.

Another positive signal, the latest corporate publications, much better than expected.

If in recent sessions the market had been handicapped by disappointing figures from Target, Walmart or Snapchat, retailers "Macy's, Williams Sonoma and Dollar General gave reasons to be a little optimistic vis-à-vis the American consumer. “, wrote, in a note, Edward Moya, of Oanda.

"Even though macroeconomic pressures on consumer spending have increased in the past quarter, our customers have continued to buy," said Macy's CEO during the results presentation (+14.13% to 21 $.92), Jeff Gennette.

As for the low-cost distributor Dollar General (+11.23% to 217.27 dollars), it even raised its financial forecasts for the year, after having exceeded analysts' expectations during the first quarter of its financial year (from February to April).

Wall Street also welcomed the announcement of the takeover of the remote computing specialist (cloud) VMware (+ 2.90% to 124.04 dollars) by the semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom (+ 3 .20% to $548.66), for an enterprise value of $61 billion.

The operation is a ray of sunshine for a sector which has just had a very difficult start to the year on the stock market.

The good mood of the day was however somewhat tarnished by the sharper than initially announced contraction of the American gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter, down 1.5% against 1.4%.

While the week could see the end of a streak of eight consecutive weeks of decline in the Dow Jones, the longest since 1923, investors still lack conviction.

“Everyone recognizes that equities have plunged below technical thresholds, but is it enough only for a technical rebound or have we hit a real floor?” Asked Karl Haeling.

On the stock market, the graphics card manufacturer Nvidia (+1.51% to 172.31 dollars) benefited from better results than expected by analysts, even if its forecasts disappointed.

Twitter was also wanted (+4.62% to 38.88 dollars), after the announcement on Wednesday that Elon Musk had raised the share of direct contribution he was putting on the table to buy the social network, to 33.5 billion dollars, against 21 initially planned.

The entrepreneur has thus waived the entire loan of 12.5 billion dollars guaranteed by Tesla shares that he was initially to subscribe, which benefited Thursday under the manufacturer of electric vehicles (+ 3.66% at $682.89).

© 2022 AFP