(message supplemented by individual values)
NEW YORK (awp international) – The US jobs report caused a small roller coaster ride on Wall Street and the Nasdaq stock exchanges on Friday. Towards the end of trading, investors became more cautious, so the initial gains crumbled and turned into losses. The mixed job data was interpreted differently. Some see it as a signal that the cycle of interest rate hikes has probably come to an end. The skeptics take a wait-and-see position and stress that the US Federal Reserve will continue to keep all doors open.
The best-known Wall Street index, the Dow Jones Industrial, ended the day after a predominantly slightly positive trend with a minus of 0.43 percent to 35,065.62 points. For the first week of August there is a loss of around one percent. The market-wide S&P 500 lost 0.53 percent on Friday to 4478.03 points. The technology-heavy selection index Nasdaq 100 fell by 0.51 percent to 15,274.92 points. His weekly loss adds up to three percent.
The picture for the labor market in the world’s largest economy was mixed in July. Although it remained robust overall, there were also signs of weakening. The increase in the number of employees fell short of expectations, while the unemployment rate fell. Wage growth remained solid.
LBBW analyst Dirk Chlench commented that a weakening is slowly emerging on the labor market, which is “overdue” in view of the Fed’s interest rate hikes in the past. With a view to US key interest rates, he therefore believes the end of the road has been reached. Ulrich Wortberg from Helaba, on the other hand, pointed to the robust wage development, which is making the fight against inflation more difficult. According to him, the Fed is therefore unlikely to announce an end to interest rate hikes just yet.
On the company side, the quarterly reporting season in the USA is now past its peak. It was particularly strong in the technology sector. On Friday, the focus was on the heavyweights Amazon and Apple. While Apple, the bottom performer in the Dow, fell 4.8 percent, Amazon, one of the top stocks in the Nasdaq selection index, gained 8.3 percent to hit a 12-month high. However, Apple shares last hit a record high in July.
Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan had warned Apple investors were too optimistic the day before the iPhone manufacturer’s figures. His discussions with investors had shown that the expectation prevailed that Apple could surprise positively in the third quarter and possibly raise the outlook. However, such hopes were not fulfilled.
Amazon, on the other hand, raised the bar for its full-year sales target and reported sparkling profits for the current quarter. The online trading giant marked a turning point with the second quarter, wrote UBS analyst Lloyd Wamsley. Analyst Eric Sheridan from Goldman Sachs said the dynamics of the global online trading business, increasing operational profitability in the North American business and a stabilization in sales growth in the cloud division AWS were the sources for the strong second quarter. Not least from the strong cloud Business, other stocks also benefited: Microsoft rose 0.3 percent and Snowflake gained 3.5 percent.
Among the small caps, Tupperware shot up more than 50 percent at times. The share ended trading up 35.5 percent. The manufacturer of food storage containers had reached an agreement with its creditors.
The euro was last traded at $1.1007. Before the jobs report was released, it was trading at around $1.0940. The European Central Bank set the reference rate in Frankfurt at 1.0946 (Thursday: 1.0932) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9136 (0.9148) euros.
On the US bond market, the futures contract for ten-year government bonds (T-Note Future) rose by 0.94 percent to 111.27 points. The yield on ten-year bonds fell to 4.04 percent./ck/he
— By Claudia Müller, dpa-AFX —
2023-08-04 20:24:36
#Equities #York #conclusion #moderate #losses #mixed #jobs #data
