NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – After the long weekend due to the holiday, the US stock markets should start with a big minus on Tuesday. The reason for this is increasing speculation that the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates due to persistently high inflation. This causes bond yields to rise significantly and equities to suffer corresponding losses. Above all, the technology stocks on the Nasdaq are likely to come under selling pressure. The banking sector could also take a beating after the investment bank Goldman Sachs published quarterly figures that were worse than analysts had expected.
The broker IG assessed the Dow Jones Industrial around half an hour before the start of trading 0.78 percent lower at 35,632 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 was recently expected to be around 1.5 percent lower.
In view of the high US inflation of currently seven percent, countermeasures by the Fed are becoming increasingly likely. Up to four rate hikes of 0.25 percentage points each are expected on the markets this year. Individual market participants can even imagine stronger rate hikes. Otherwise, the Fed is threatened with a loss of credibility, some argue. Also on the horizon is the possibility that the Fed could soon scale back its balance sheet, which has ballooned to about $8.8 trillion.
Among the individual values, the shares of Activision Blizzard are likely to be the focus of investor interest. They reacted to the news that Microsoft wants to take over the video game provider in a deal worth almost 70 billion dollars with a pre-market price jump of 37 percent. The software giant behind the Xbox gaming console is thus securing popular games such as “Call of Duty”, “Overwatch” and “Candy Crush”. Microsoft shares, on the other hand, fell 1.1 percent premarket.
The US investment bank Goldman Sachs suffered a slump in profits in the fourth quarter due to weaker proceeds in the trading business. In the three months to the end of December, the financial group earned 13 percent less than a year ago. Analysts had expected a better result. The important trading division in particular had to make cutbacks as the stock market boom subsided during the Corona crisis. Goldman’s share price fell 4.1 percent premarket.
The shares of the vaccine manufacturers Biontech, Curevac, Moderna and Novavax posted pre-market price drops of between 3.4 and 6.5 percent. According to dealers, they suffered from the prospects of an improving situation worldwide in the corona pandemic./edh/jha/
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