NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Sustained growth hopes ensured that the record hunt on Wall Street continued on Monday. Both the Dow Jones Industrial and the market-wide S&P 500 reared up again shortly before the close of trading and each reached historic highs. The technology-heavy and therefore economically sensitive selection indices picked up more strongly at the beginning of the week than the two standard values stock market barometers, but are still far from their respective record highs.
The US leading index Dow went 0.53 percent higher at 32,953.46 points from trading. His record high is now a good 32,973 points. The S&P 500 rose 0.65 percent to 3968.94 points. Among the tech indices, the Nasdaq 100 managed an increase of 1.12 percent to 13082.54 points.
The optimism about the corona aid package for the economy signed by US President Joe Biden and better than experts expected economic data ultimately gave a lot of tailwind. Surprisingly, the mood in New York industrial companies brightened significantly in March. The release fits in with a series of robust economic data over the past few weeks. In the meantime, many economists and equity strategists have already raised their growth expectations for this year.
Growing economic optimism has meanwhile caused capital market rates to rise significantly in the USA. This is rather bad news for investors, as higher interest rates make bonds more attractive compared to stocks. So far, the US Federal Reserve has not stood in the way of the trend. Whether this will stay that way will be shown this Wednesday when the Federal Reserve will announce new resolutions after its interest rate meeting. A change in monetary policy is largely not expected.
From a company perspective, pharmaceutical companies were the focus at the beginning of the week. The shares of Eli Lilly, bottom of the S&P 500, fell by around nine percent. Study data on an Alzheimer’s drug had disappointed.
GenMark Diagnostics shares went up nearly 30 percent to $ 23.98. Roche plans to acquire the company for US $ 24.05 per share. The transaction is a small but sensible acquisition for the Swiss pharmaceutical company and expands its diagnostics portfolio, wrote analyst Michael Leuchten from the major Swiss bank UBS. GenMark offers molecular diagnostic tests designed to detect multiple pathogens from a single patient sample. Roche shares closed around 2 percent in Zurich.
In addition, US investors bravely took hold of the shares of airlines. The papers of American Airlines and United Airlines rallied at the top of the S&P 500 with profits of around eight percent each. At an industry conference, company representatives made positive statements about the development of demand.
Alibaba’s papers, on the other hand, lost 0.7 percent. According to a press report, the Chinese Internet giant is under pressure to sell part of its stakes in media companies. The Chinese government is concerned about the company’s influence on public opinion in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The euro suffered somewhat from robust US data, trading at $ 1.1930 after the New York market closed. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.1920 (Friday: 1.1933) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8389 (0.8380) euros. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently rose by 0.08 percent to 131.96 points. In return, the yield on ten-year government bonds fell to 1.60 percent./la/fba
By Lutz Alexander, dpa-AFX
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