NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors are taking it slow on Monday on Wall Street after the last strong run. They positioned themselves a little more cautiously with the standard values in the Dow Jones Industrial due to the continued smoldering uncertainty that prevails around the coronavirus variant Omikron and the unbroken high inflation. Against this background, the coming days will be dominated by monetary policy – including the Fed’s interest rate decision on Wednesday.
After its four percent plus the previous week, the Dow Jones Industrial toying with the 36,000 points at the beginning of the week for the first time since mid-November. Most recently, the broker IG estimated the leading index three quarters of an hour before the start of trading, just above this mark at 36 003 points. This corresponds to a slight plus of 0.09 percent.
“In view of the constant high inflation in the United States, the markets expect further signals in terms of interest rate turnaround,” said market observer Timo Emden with a view to the Fed meeting. The US Federal Reserve is expected to react to high inflation and accelerate the exit from its extremely loose stance. At the moment, however, the market is again asking to what extent Omikron could restrict its monetary policy leeway again.
For the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100, the indications on Monday suggest an increase of 0.4 percent. Among the tech stocks, the focus is likely to be on Apple’s market valuation and the next milestone: On Monday, the stock could succeed in breaking the $ 3 trillion mark for the first time after its record rally. The stock was 1.4 percent higher on Monday, trading above $ 180 for the first time. This would bring it very close to this threshold.
Otherwise, there were some analyst comments in the pre-market session that attracted attention. Among other things, JPMorgan is now approaching the shares of Coca-Cola more optimistically with an “Overweight” vote, which gained one percent before the market. In a study published on Monday, analyst Andrea Teixeira is betting on growth for the shower company in the coming year. In addition, the strong brand suffered less from cost pressure and, on top of that, the shares were cheap.
In the pharmaceutical sector, Pfizer has been named a new favorite over Merck & Co by UBS. A buy recommendation caused Pfizer shares to rise by half a percent before the IPO, while those of Merck & Co fell 0.4 percent after being downgraded to “neutral”. According to analyst Colin Bristow, Pfizer has better prospects of a billion-dollar business with a new coronavirus drug.
Meanwhile, Pfizer also announced an acquisition for which the pharmaceutical company is willing to pay a high premium: Arena Pharmaceuticals is to be incorporated for 6.7 billion dollars. For the shareholders of the takeover target, this means a real rain of money, the price rose by almost 90 percent before the market. Pfizer is offering $ 100 per share, twice the price on Friday when Arena shares closed at just under $ 50.
There was also a meaningful analytical voice among the technology stocks: Qualcomm’s papers are heading for pre-trading hours with a rise of 1.7 percent to their record high of $ 188.77. JPMorgan added the stocks to its “Analyst Focus List” of particularly promising investments on Monday in anticipation of a re-rating. Among other things, expert Samik Chatterjee is relying on the tailwind of decreasing supply bottlenecks in the chip sector./tih/eas
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