NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Wall Street presented itself in pretty good shape on Wednesday. At the top, the leading index Dow Jones Industrial climbed to around 30,300 points towards its record high. At the end of trading, however, the profit melted a little and the index closed just 0.38 percent higher at 30,129.83 points. The market-wide S&P 500 ended up just in plus with 0.07 percent to 3690.01 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100, however, slipped clearly into the red at the end of trading with 0.51 percent to 12,653.14 points.
Sales in New York began to decline before Christmas. Trading will take place again on Thursday, but the stock exchanges will close three hours earlier than usual.
By the threat of veto by US President Donald Trump against the corona stimulus package passed by Congress, investors were not irritated by the middle of the week. The Republicans could not afford to fail politically, commented analyst Edward Moya from broker Oanda. Mostly robust US economic data and the looming agreement on a Brexit trade agreement between the European Union and Great Britain had no discernible impact on the New York stock indices.
The focus was on the pharmaceutical industry. At Biontech, the enthusiasm of investors about the delivery of an additional 100 million doses of the corona vaccine to the US government was limited: The air is out of the New York-listed shares of the Mainz company, even if they are at the end of the day reduced their discount to only half a percent. For the titles of the Biontech vaccine partner Pfizer, things went in the other direction after their recent weak phase: They won 1.9 percent.
The shares of Merck & Co gained 0.4 percent. The pharmaceutical company will receive up to around 365 million US dollars from the US government for the possible delivery of 60,000 to 100,000 doses of a drug against the lung disease Covid-19 to the US government. However, the drug is not yet approved.
The stocks of Supernus Pharmaceuticals jumped 14.6 percent. In an advanced clinical study with its drug candidate for ADHD in adults, the company achieved the so-called primary endpoint, i.e. the main objective of the study.
Another setback was there for the shareholders of the electric truck manufacturer Nikola with a minus of 10.7 percent. Dealers referred to an order cancellation by the US waste disposal company Republic Services for 2500 battery-operated garbage trucks.
Financials took the lead in the Dow. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and American Express gained between 2.1 and 2.8 percent.
The euro traded at $ 1.2191 after the market closed. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at 1.2166 (Tuesday: 1.2239) dollars, the dollar cost 0.8220 (0.8171) euros.
The futures contract for ten-year US government bonds (T-Note Future) fell 0.14 percent to 137.79 points. The yield on the ten-year bond was 0.946 percent./ajx/he
By Achim Jüngling, dpa-AFX
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