Tel Aviv declines led by the insurance index; housing and construction jumps

12:10

Even at this time, the declines in the stock market continue. The Tel Aviv 35 index falls by about 2.1%, the Tel Aviv 90 index loses 1.7%. The declines in the insurance index worsen and reach about 4.1%, the finance index falls by about 2.7%, and the technology index falls by about 2%.

The stocks leading the declines: Nofer Energy , the phoenix , mega light , Enlight Energy andMigdal Insurance .

stock Housing and construction contrary to the general trend, continues to climb after the reports that the Generation Fund is in negotiations to purchase it in a deal of over NIS 4 billion.

Oil prices are soaring at the end of US President Donald Trump’s visit to China, after he said China had agreed to buy oil from the US. China has yet to confirm the development. The price of a barrel of American oil jumps by about 3.4% and stands at $104; The price of a Brent barrel stands at $108, an increase of about 3%.

The increases were recorded even after the two presidents agreed that the Strait of Hormuz should remain open. “President Xi also clarified China’s opposition to the militarization of the strait and any attempt to collect a toll for its use,” according to a statement issued yesterday by an official at the White House.

11:31

Nofer Energy which leads the declines in Tel Aviv, reported this morning on the signing of principle documents for the establishment of storage facilities in Romania. The total consideration for the procurement agreements is estimated at approximately 80 million euros. Upon completion, the combined facilities (solar + storage) are expected to generate an annual EBITDA of approximately €60 million in the first full year of operation.

10:44

The declines in Tel Aviv are worsening. The Tel Aviv 35 index falls by about 1.4%, and the Tel Aviv 90 index loses about 1.8%. The insurance index drops by about 3.1%, the finance index decreases by about 2.2%, the real estate index loses 1.7% and the technology index also decreases by about 1.5%.

the descents lead Nofer Energy which loses more than 5%, andmega light down about 4%.

The futures contracts on Wall Street continue to trade in declines as well: the Dow Jones falls by about 0.4%, the S&P 500 falls by about 0.6% and the Nasdaq loses its value by about 0.9%.

10:05

The stock exchange in Tel Aviv opens the day with declines, led by insurance and finance stocks. The Tel Aviv 35 index falls by about 1.1%, while the Tel Aviv 90 index loses about 1%. The insurance index loses about 2%, and the banking index drops about 1.8%.

The security company Arith reported that its subsidiary, Reshef Technologies, won a tender by the Ministry of Defense for the supply of a new type of rocket launchers (which was not included in the orders it supplied to the Ministry of Defense in recent years), in the amount of approximately NIS 28 million. The company states that there is another winner in the tender, and that the terms of the tender include an option to increase the quantity by an additional 90% in relation to the winning.

stock Housing and construction Jumps by more than 6% after the reports that the Generation Fund is in negotiations to purchase it in a deal of over NIS 4 billion.

09:10

Energy Housing and Construction Company (Energy again ) which produces electricity using natural gas and renewable energy sources, may soon be sold to the Generation Fund in a deal of over NIS 4 billion. In the meantime, Zohar Levy, chairman of the Summit company and its controlling owner, is negotiating with the Generation Fund to invest in it, which, if it comes to fruition, will be part of the financing of the transaction for the purchase of housing and energy construction.

08:10

The price drops in Asia are intensifying at this time: the Kospi falls by about 5.3%, the Nikkei loses 1.9%, the Hang Seng falls by about 1.4%. The Shanghai index also went down by about 0.3%, while the Shenzhen remained up slightly by 0.2%.

Wall Street futures are trading lower this morning: the Dow Jones is down about 0.2%, the S&P 500 is down about 0.4% and the Nasdaq is down about 0.8%.

07:45

1. The stock market

Trading in Tel Aviv will open this morning against the backdrop of growing alertness in Israel for the possibility of a renewed US war with Iran. Investors will also follow the summaries of the summit in Beijing between President Trump and President Xi. It is possible that the stock market will get a boost from yesterday’s gains on Wall Street, which closed at record highs again, although this morning the futures on Wall Street are actually trading lower at this time. The main stock exchanges in Asia are trading in a mostly negative trend.

The consumer price index that will be published today after the lockdown may influence the decisions of investors in light of the assumption that the index will show a jump in prices in April, especially on the bank shares that fell sharply yesterday following the report of Bank Hapoalim.

The dual stocks return in balance arbitrage spreads. Palo Alto, which rose this week to a historic market value in Tel Aviv, over half a trillion shekels, with a positive gap of 3%, but is not part of the indexes. Tower, Nova and Enlight will rise at the opening by about 1%, on the other hand Kamtech and Ormat with a negative gap of about 2.5%.

Yesterday, at the end of a volatile day and with a tailwind from the positive opening of trading on Wall Street, the declines weakened towards the end of trading and even turned into gains at the close. TA 35 closed at a 0.5% increase, TA 90 went up 0.6%. The technology index stood out for the better, jumping by 2.5%, on the other hand, the banking index shed a similar rate, following the disappointment of investors from the Bank Hapoalim report published this morning.

Liran Lublin, director of the research department at the IBI investment house, noted that the declines in the banking sector are too sharp, and maintained an “outperform” recommendation for the stock, with a target price of NIS 88 – an upside of about 15% compared to its current price.

The stock exchange states that “reports from the dual technology companies generate high volatility in the market. We saw this positively in the Tower and Nova reports, and in contrast to the negative in the Kamtech reports, when the market reacts sharply to the results. It has been a long time since such high volatility has been seen in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in response to reports. Attention will shift in the coming period from the Wall Street reports to the local reports.”

Thus, after a longer trading break than usual, trading in the stock Nova came back and she jumped sharply. The company that provides test systems for chip manufacturing processes, surpassed analysts’ forecasts in a record quarter, and delivered a higher than expected forecast for the second quarter of the year.

stock Tower It didn’t stop yesterday and jumped by over 8%, after jumping by 23% the day before. In addition to the excellent report it published yesterday, it reported on silicon photonics contracts worth $1.3 billion for 2027 and a sales forecast of $2.8 billion for 2028. Bank Hapoalim raises the target price per share from $218 to $305, a premium of 12.6%.

This morning, the trend in the main stock exchanges in Asia is mostly negative: the Kospi falls by about 4.5%, the Nikkei loses 1.6% and the Hang Seng also falls by about 1%. The Shenzhen and the Shanghai index, on the other hand, are trading with slight increases of 0.2% and about 0.1% respectively.

Yesterday, with a boost of Technology stocks the indices closed at a record high. Nasdaq rose by 1%, S&P 500 by 0.8%, Dow Jones rose by a similar rate and traded again above 50 thousand points.

Renewed bets on the field of artificial intelligence, strong corporate profits and signs of economic resilience are pushing the markets. A published report showed that retail sales rose for the third month in a row in April. Another factor that supported the positive sentiment was the stabilization of oil prices. US President Trump has signaled that China is ready to support negotiation efforts with Iran, as part of an effort to promote a diplomatic solution that will end the war and lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Yesterday’s story yesterday belongs to the biggest IPO of the year in New York – within minutes since it started trading, the AI ​​chip stock, Cerebras, jumped by about 100%. The company was priced in the IPO at $185 per share and jumped to about $400 before pulling back a bit.

A stock stood out Nvidia which rose to a record and is already traded at about 5.7 trillion dollars. Yesterday, the US approved about 10 Chinese companies to purchase the company’s chips. The chip company’s market value jumped more than $900 billion in seven days.

stock Cisco Systems jumped after the company provided a stronger-than-expected revenue forecast alongside a significant streamlining move that included cutting thousands of employees, as part of a deep preparation for the age of artificial intelligence.

stock Ondes Holdings surged following the quarterly report. The company shows exponential growth following the acquisitions of several Israeli companies.

The stock of the chip company Cerebras completed its IPO yesterday and concluded its first trading day with a meteoric rise. The company was priced in the IPO at $185 per share and jumped to about $400 before withdrawing and closing at $311, an increase of 70%, with a value of $67 billion. This is the largest offering this year.

Cerberus, which competes with Nvidia, is focusing on a product called the Wafer-Scale Engine: a square silicon chip that is much larger than most modern AI processors, about the size of a children’s book. The chip contains about 4 trillion transistors and is equipped with 44 gigabytes of SRAM memory, a particularly large amount of a type of memory commonly used in artificial intelligence processing.

2. The bond market

After the publication of the consumer price index in the US, government bond yields there rose and the 10-year bonds traded at a yield of 4.46%, the highest in 10 months.

UBS noted that at the same time government bond yields denominated in euros also rose, with the yield on the 30-year German government bond at its highest level since 2011. This is against the background of the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. However, the bank continues to believe that the threshold for raising interest rates in the US remains high, and expects that yields there will decrease in the coming months, as inflation in the US moderates and investors re-evaluate their expectations of the Fed’s policy. Government bond yields denominated in euros are also expected to fall, amid concerns about growth.

Mark Hafele, Chief Investment Officer of UBS Global Wealth Management, stated that “the current pricing in the interest markets is too hawkish. This means that high-quality bonds offer an attractive risk-to-opportunity ratio in the current environment, as yields are expected to fall.” He prefers high-quality bonds with short and medium maturity ranges, along with selective exposure to emerging markets, high yield bonds (bonds with a high yield, often with a higher risk) and debt inferior

3. The commodity and foreign exchange market

Against the background of continued geopolitical uncertainty, the price of oil is trading around $100 per barrel. In this context, the Wall Street Journal also mentioned the summit meeting between US President Trump and Chinese President Xi, but added that the economists of the Dutch bank ING noted that “the market may be placing too much hope that the talks between the US and China will yield positive results regarding Iran.”

At the same time, the price of gold hovers around $4,600, in light of expectations that interest rates in the US will remain high for a longer time, due to the inflation data there.

The shekel, which has strengthened a lot against the dollar recently, traded relatively stable this week around a rate of 2.90, and this is its price this morning as well.

4. Macro

The consumer price index for the month of April will be published today. Ofer Klein, head of the economics and research department at Harel, estimated this week that this will be the highest monthly index this year, with an increase of 1.1%-1.2%, with more than half of the increase coming from the jump in fuel prices alongside an increase in flight prices.

Despite the expected high index, the annual inflation rate is not expected to jump dramatically, and may even remain unchanged. This is because for the annual calculation, April 2026 replaces the April 2025 index in the formula, which was a negative surprise at the time and was high at a similar level (1.1%). In other words, the expectation is that inflation will remain around the figure of 1.9% measured in March.

Ronan Menachem, Chief Markets Economist at Mizrachi Tefahot, told Globes that “the April 2026 index is very intriguing, and the outlook for it is high.” Menachem emphasizes: “It is important to understand that this is about 60% of the total expected inflation for the next 12 months, and that the following indices will be significantly lower.”

Menachem points out that the index is subject to the seasonal effects of the holiday season, the turnover of clothing and footwear products and the increase in activity in the rental market, so the seasonally adjusted figure will receive more attention this time than usual. He adds that the world is seeing sharp increases in price indices due to the increase in the price of inputs, goods and transportation, “which may be reflected here as well, albeit at a lower rate.”

On the other hand, the sharp appreciation of the shekel is, according to him, “a real brake on price pressures”, so that there may be a larger gap than usual between the rate of change of the general index and the core index (without food and energy).

Next week, a number of macro data will be published, including the number of vacancies for February-April, data from a personnel survey for April and the national accounts estimate for the first quarter. Abroad, the GDP in Japan, the consumer price indices in the UK and the Eurozone, and unemployment data in the US will be published.

In the US, the US consumer price index for the month of April was published this week and rose more than expected – to 3.8% (annual rate), under the influence of high energy prices following the war with Iran.

Referring to the index data, George Brown, senior economist at Schroders, noted: “When oil prices remain unpredictable, the great danger is that a temporary energy shock will permeate the economy and become a more consistent and lasting element.

“With the prospect of interest rate cuts during 2026 now looking slim, the monetary discussion has shifted to the question of whether the Federal Reserve can afford to wait on the fence, or whether it will eventually be pushed into continued monetary tightening. The head of the Fed, Kevin Warsh, may support an approach that turns a blind eye to a one-time shock to energy prices, but other Fed officials seem to be much less relaxed about these risks.

“The Fed may find itself ‘behind the curve’, which will require a more aggressive and forceful response down the road. “Our base scenario: We estimate that the Fed will adopt hawkish and aggressive rhetoric, but in practice will leave interest rates unchanged, before returning to a policy of monetary expansion during the year 2027.”

5. Forecast

The Philadelphia Chip Index (SOX ) jumped from the beginning of the year by almost 70%, and presented a much higher overperformance than the general market; The month of April yielded the second highest return in the index ever (about 38%).

At the Cantor Investment Bank, they address this and analyze what is expected now. The bank’s chip analyst, C.J. Muse, still sees upside in the chip market, and believes that the chip equipment companies will also benefit from the trend, given the expected growth in this market. In his estimation, companies with significant pricing power, with an emphasis on the field of memory and storage (such as SanDisk, Micron, Western Digital and Seagate) can show a significant upside in earnings per share. He also finds attractiveness in the computing field for AI and mentions Nvidia, Broadcom and AMD.