NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – On Wall Street, the leading index Dow Jones Industrial fell a little further after its price slide the day before. The leading US index fell by 0.48 percent on Wednesday to 32,698.37 points. The focus remains on the question of how quickly and how often key interest rates will be raised in the fight against high inflation.
The market-wide S&P 500 lost 0.17 percent to 3979.45 points. The Nasdaq 100 technology selection index, on the other hand, rose by 0.19 percent to 12,175.39 points.
Fear of interest rates rising more quickly triggered a price slide on the US stock exchanges on Tuesday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell had said the final rate level was likely to be higher than previously thought and that the Fed could accelerate the pace of rate hikes.
The economic highlight of the week is due on Friday with the official labor market report. Should employment and salaries rise more sharply in February than previously forecast, this could reignite interest rate fears and weigh on the stock markets.
Current job data from Wednesday indicate that the job market will remain robust. Employment in the private sector was better than expected. In addition, the number of vacancies at the beginning of the year did not fall as much as expected and thus remained at a historically high level. This points to a persistent imbalance between labor demand and supply, which in turn supports higher interest rates from the Fed.
According to a report by the Fed, the US economy grew slightly at the beginning of the year. “Overall, economic activity picked up slightly in early 2023,” it said in its economic report.
At the end of the Dow, the shares of Merck & Co lost three percent. The pharmaceutical company entered into a global license and collaboration agreement with Opko Health to develop a vaccine against the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes glandular fever and is linked to multiple sclerosis and some types of cancer. Merck will make an upfront payment of US$50 million to Opko. The Opko papers rose by a good six percent.
Among the individual stocks, shares of Tesla lost almost four percent among the weakest stocks in the Nasdaq 100. The electric car maker was targeted by the NHTSA after complaints about missing steering wheel mounts. The authority announced on its website that it had launched a preliminary investigation into two reports of steering wheels falling off while driving.
Crowdstrike shares are up almost 3% on the Nasdaq 100. The cyber security specialist performed better than expected in the fourth quarter and is also more optimistic about the first quarter than analysts had forecast
