NEW YORK (awp international) – Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, investors turned to US stocks again on Thursday. The previous day’s losses were followed by an increase of 1.02 percent to 34,707.94 points in the Dow Jones Industrial. Oil prices that fell over the course of the year eased the economic concerns that the high price level had recently aroused.
The market-wide S&P 500 gained 1.43 percent to 4520.16 points. The clearest gains were on the Nasdaq stock exchange with the technology-heavy selection index Nasdaq 100, which expanded its gains with 14,765.70 points to 2.20 percent. There, rising chip values were considered the central driver.
“The stock market’s susceptibility to fluctuations is likely to remain very high for the time being,” emphasized Helaba’s chief economist Gertrud Traud, referring to a combination of war, high raw material and energy costs and rising interest rates. Four weeks after the Russian invasion, fighting continued in Ukraine. The focus was on the summit marathon of NATO, the EU and the leading democratic economic powers (G7).
At the special summit in Brussels, the NATO members agreed on a massive rearmament. The G7 and the EU also agreed new sanctions intended to make gold transactions significantly more difficult for Russia. However, the European heads of state and government remain at odds with regard to a possible ban on imports of Russian energy.
The economic concerns, which the day before because of the high oil and gas prices as an argument for price losses, were at least not further strengthened on Thursday with mixed economic data. In the US, the number of weekly initial jobless claims fell sharply in the previous week, on the other hand, orders for durable goods fell surprisingly sharply in February.
Chip values dominated on the Nasdaq, led by Nvidia with a price jump of 9.8 percent. In the semiconductor industry there is imagination for a possible cooperation between the processor specialist and Intel. Nvidia’s idea of outsourcing the production of its own chips to the competitor was already an issue the day before and is now having an effect, according to the market. Against this background, Intel also rose by seven percent. In tow, the papers of the third competitor AMD also rose by 5.8 percent.
The Apple papers were also in demand from the technology sector, with price gains of 2.3 percent. As the Bloomberg news agency reported, citing circles, the iPhone manufacturer is considering introducing a subscription model with monthly payments for its expensive high-tech devices. However, the report said that this consideration is still in an early phase.
The recently fluctuating prices of Chinese tech companies traded in the USA came under pressure again after the recovery of the past few days. This was especially true for the papers of the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, which fell by nine percent on the Nasdaq. Those of the search engine Baidu lost 2.8 percent. The stock exchange in Hong Kong, which sets the pace, gave way again on Thursday.
The price of the transport service provider Uber increased by around five percent. He has brokered a deal with New York taxis, which will also be made available in the Uber app in the future. The market said it was the first alliance of its kind in the US and an attempt to reduce driver shortages and fare pressure.
The euro hovered around the $1.10 mark. Most recently, it was trading just below this again at $1.0999. The European Central Bank set the reference rate at 1.0978 (Wednesday: 1.0985) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9109 (0.9103) euros.
US government bonds trended weaker. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries fell 0.28 percent to 122.81 points. The return on the paper was 2.37 percent./tih/jha/
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