NEW YORK (awp international) – A surprisingly strong US jobs report weighed on Wall Street only briefly on Friday. After initially significant losses, the most important indices recovered quickly. In the end, the Dow Jones Industrial even turned into profit. On the one hand, investors fear further aggressive rate hikes by the Fed, especially since wage increases in July did not slow down as hoped. On the other hand, however, the data nourishes hope that the world’s largest economy will not slip into recession in the coming months.
Around two hours before the close of trading, the Dow rose by 0.06 percent to 32,746.50 points. After the strongest July in twelve years, in which the best-known Wall Street index rose by almost seven percent, it is now heading for a minus of 0.3 percent in the first week of August.
The market-wide S&P 500 fell 0.22 percent on Friday to 4142.86 points. The Nasdaq 100 lost a slightly more significant 1.00 percent to 13,177.41 points. However, it had increased by 13 percent in July and its plus in the first week of August is currently 1.8 percent.
In July, the US economy created significantly more jobs than expected. In addition, the increase in employment in the two previous months was revised upwards. During the Corona crisis, the labor market collapsed dramatically at times. It has now recovered significantly and companies are complaining about a shortage of workers. Wages also increased slightly more than expected, while the unemployment rate fell to pre-coronavirus levels.
Bank stocks were particularly in demand after the job market report and the associated expectations of further significant rate hikes by the Fed. In the Dow, JPMorgan is up nearly 3 percent. Bank of America’s stock gained about 2 percent, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley rose about 1 percent each.
The flood of numbers on the part of the companies ebbed away towards the end of the week. The shares of the biotech company Amgen, which published its quarterly report after the market closed the day before, lost almost half a percent after an initially very weak start. Amgen’s second-quarter revenue and earnings grew more than analysts expected, thanks to strong drug sales.
Lyft’s shares shot up 14.5 percent. The transport service provider also exceeded expectations with a record high adjusted operating quarterly result (Ebitda). A strong interim report and a good outlook for the Doordash food delivery service caused the price to rise by around one percent.
A takeover project also came into focus: The world’s largest online retailer Amazon wants to swallow the vacuum and washing robot manufacturer iRobot for a total of around 1.7 billion US dollars in cash including debt. This values iRobot at $61 per share. Shares of iRobot then jumped a little more than 19 percent to $59.65, while Amazon’s fell almost 1 percent.
Teva benefited by almost six percent from a positive analyst comment from Bank of America. On the one hand, analyst Jason Gerberry referred to the relative valuation of the pharmaceutical stock and sees price drivers following the announcement of the opioid comparison by the group. Teva is making significant progress on the litigation. This, combined with a solid new product cycle for 2023 and 2024, should be enough for Teva to return to operating earnings growth, he said
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