indexes in this article
NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – After the long weekend due to the holiday, the US stock markets are likely to 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 ensures significantly higher bond yields and corresponding losses for equities. Above all, the technology stocks on the Nasdaq are likely to come under selling pressure. The banking sector could also take a hit after the investment bank Goldman Sachs published quarterly figures that were worse than analysts had expected.
The broker IG rated the Dow Jones Industrial (Dow Jones 30 Industrial) about half an hour before the start of trading 0.78 percent lower at 35,632 points. The technology-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 interest rate hikes of 0.25 percentage points each are expected on the markets this year. Individual market participants can imagine even stronger rate hikes. Otherwise, the Fed is threatened with a loss of credibility, some argue. Also under consideration 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 responded with a pre-market price jump of 37 percent to the news that Microsoft wants to take over the video game provider in a deal worth almost 70 billion dollars. The software giant behind the Xbox gaming console is thus securing popular games such as “Call of Duty”, “Overwatch” and “Candy Crush”. Microsoft stocks, on the other hand, fell by 1.1 percent before the market.
The US investment bank Goldman Sachs suffered a profit slump in the fourth quarter due to weaker earnings 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 before the market.
The shares of the vaccine manufacturers Biontech (BioNTech (ADRs)), CureVac, Moderna and Novavax posted premarket falls 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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