Equities New York outlook: Earnings expected – relief after inflation data

NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The US stock markets are likely to continue their recovery from the previous day on Wednesday. Fresh inflation data provided positive impetus in pre-market trading. Consumer prices in the USA rose by 7.0 percent compared to the same month last year. This is the highest rate of inflation since 1982, but was expected by analysts.

The broker IG rated the Dow Jones Industrial about half an hour before the starting bell about 0.4 percent higher at 36,385 points. The day before, the leading US index had risen by around half a percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 was last expected to be around 0.8 percent higher on Wednesday after rising around a percent and a half on Tuesday.

The day before, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had created a positive atmosphere when he emphasized the economic strength of the United States. Because of the strong economy and the high inflation rate, he had signaled an increase in the key interest rate for the period from March. The Federal Reserve (Fed) will complete its billion dollar bond purchases in March and then “raise the key rate during the year,” Powell said at a hearing in the US Senate on Tuesday. Powell emphasized that the labor market has largely recovered from the Corona crisis.

Among the individual values, the shares of Biogen were in the focus of investors with a pre-market price slump of 9.7 percent. The US public health insurance wants to severely limit the assumption of the immense costs for the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm from Biogen.

Meta’s shares advanced 0.5 percent pre-market and were thus unimpressed by a negative court decision. The competition lawsuit, with which the US government wants to break up the Facebook operator, has been accepted by a court in Washington at the second attempt. Judge James Boasberg now saw the allegation of unfair competition in the improved lawsuit as much better justified and also rejected Facebook’s request to dismiss the lawsuit./edh/mis

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