NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors in the US stock market were in a buying mood shortly before Christmas. Thanks to new hope in the pandemic and positive economic data, the good mood of the past few days has brightened.
The market-wide and particularly meaningful S&P 500 rose close to its record high four and a half weeks ago on Thursday. With a plus of 0.62 percent to 4725.79 points, like the other indices, he ran out of breath at the close of trading. Many market participants have already closed their books, and trading volumes have been correspondingly thin.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial 
increased by 0.55 percent to 35,950.56 points. His weekly plus is around 1.7 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 recorded on the last trading day of the week with plus 0.79 percent to 16,308.21 points again higher gains than the standard value indices. Overall, it was the third day in a row with profits for the US stock exchanges. They will be closed on Friday, December 24th.
Economic data such as durable goods orders, the University of Michigan consumer confidence and data from the housing market turned out better than expected shortly before Christmas. Good economic data had already fueled the recent recovery on Wall Street the day before.
British studies on the Omikron variant also gave confidence. They support the theses from South Africa, according to which the mutant of the coronavirus is far more contagious than the delta variant, but leads to hospital much less often.
Emergency approvals for pills against Covid are further bright spots in the pandemic. On Wednesday the pharmaceutical company Pfizer had already received the green light for its drug Paxlovid from the US Medicines Agency. This was followed by the emergency approval for the drug Molnupiravir from Merck & Co. Pfizer and Merck had posted price gains the day before, on Thursday their shares fell sharply in some cases.
The good economic data pushed industrial stocks. At the top of the Dow index, the construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar expanded its previous day’s profits by two percent and set course for its interim high from last week. The shares of the conglomerate Honeywell rose by 1.7 percent.
At Tesla, too, investors continued to take hold. The shares of the electric car maker rose 5.8 percent. The day before, Group boss Elon Musk had announced that the goal of selling more than ten percent of his shares in Tesla had almost been achieved. This now has a liberating effect, the pressure to sell of the past weeks is gone.
Nikola shares soared 18 percent, and the company was optimistic about further deliveries of electric trucks.
A transaction by Tencent also attracted attention on the US market. The Chinese Internet holding company wants to sell most of its stake in the e-commerce company JD.com. For this purpose, JD shares are to be distributed to Tencent shareholders in the form of a one-time dividend. It remains to be seen whether this is an indicator of further such steps by the holding, wrote the analysts at Barclays. The shares of JD.com, which are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, lost 6.9 percent.
The Euro held steady above $ 1.13. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.1310 (Wednesday: 1.1301) dollars, the dollar cost 0.8842 (0.8849) euros. In view of the upcoming Christmas holidays, there was only shortened trading on the US bond market./ajx/he
— By Achim Jüngling, dpa-AFX —
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