NEW YORK (awp international) – The prospect of further extremely loose monetary policy in the US reassured investors on Wall Street on Wednesday. The most important stock indices closed moderately in positive territory, and the leading index Dow Jones Industrial and the market-wide S&P 500 even reached record highs.
The Dow went 0.58 percent higher at 33,015.37 points. His record is now just under 33,048 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.29 percent to 3974.12 points. For the technology selection index Nasdaq 100 it went up after an initial loss of 1.5 percent in the end by 0.38 percent to 13,202.38 points.
The US Federal Reserve announced after its eagerly anticipated interest rate decision that the current monetary policy course will be maintained until the Fed’s goals are achieved. The Fed is aiming for full employment and inflation of two percent in the longer term.
For the current year, the Fed sees the economic development as much more positive than in December. This will also increase inflation more than previously thought. Nevertheless, the US central bankers have not changed their interest rate expectations. Accordingly, they still expect key interest rates at zero for the years up to 2023. The Fed is apparently feeling comfortable in letting the economy run quite hot and will not intervene, said a stockbroker.
Portfolio manager Thomas Altmann from QC Partners commented: “The Fed underlines that it sees stronger inflation this year as temporary. It is doing everything it can to calm the markets and not let the inflationary specter become even more present.”
At the top of the Dow, the shares of chemical company Dow Inc rose 4.5 percent after climbing to a high in the course of trading. In second and third place followed the shares of the aircraft manufacturer Boeing and the construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar with profits of around 3 percent each. They too benefited from the hope that the economy would pick up.
At the end of the Nasdaq 100, the shares of Pinduoduo buckled after the announcement of business figures by more than seven percent. In the case of the e-commerce platform, the growth in the gross volume of goods was disappointing, judged the analysts at Bank Citigroup.
Furthermore, Uber’s papers lost a good four percent. The company’s more than 70,000 drivers in the UK can now expect minimum wages, paid vacation and other benefits. After years of litigation and a defeat before the Supreme Court, the US company announced that it would no longer treat British drivers as independent entrepreneurs, but as employees.
Plug Power’s shares plummeted by almost eight percent. The manufacturer of fuel cells has to correct several annual financial statements due to incorrect bookings.
The papers from Onconova Therapeutics went up by around 15 percent. Market observers said that recently, penny stocks from the biotech sector, similar to Gamestop, have been mentioned frequently on the online platform Reddit and thus driven upwards.
The euro benefited greatly from the prospect of very low interest rates in the US and was quoted at 1.1984 US dollars after the New York market closed. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.1907 (Tuesday: 1.1926) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8398 (0.8385) euros. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently rose by 0.03 percent to 131.95 points. The yield on ten-year government bonds was 1.65 percent./la/fba
— By Lutz Alexander, dpa-AFX —
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