NEW YORK (awp international) – The US stock markets recovered somewhat on Monday from the massive losses of the previous week. According to stockbrokers, the day before the US presidential election was characterized by reluctance. Investors were particularly fond of the standard stocks on Wall Street, while the technology stocks on the Nasdaq clearly lagged behind. Fresh US economic data had little impact on the market indices.
The Dow Jones Industrial closed with a gain of 1.60 percent at 26 925.05 points. In the previous week, the US leading index had recorded the weakest development since the outbreak of the corona pandemic in March with a loss of 6.5 percent. The market-wide S&P 500 rose 1.23 percent to 3310.24 points on Monday. The Nasdaq 100 gained 0.29 percent to 11084.76 points.
In the polls for the presidential election, Democratic candidate Joe Biden leads by a long way ahead of Republican incumbent Donald Trump. The opinion polls also give the Democrats a good chance of retaining the majority in the House of Representatives and regaining control of the Senate after six years. Biden needs the two chambers of Congress to move something forward politically. The House of Representatives and a good third of the seats in the Senate will be voted on November 3rd.
The mood in US industry brightened much more strongly than expected in October. The ISM purchasing managers’ index rose from 55.4 points in the previous month to 59.3 points. Economists had only expected an improvement to an average of 56.0 points. In contrast, US construction spending rose less than expected in September. In a month-on-month comparison, spending climbed 0.3 percent. Analysts had expected an average increase of 1.0 percent.
In the coming days, further important events will be on the agenda with the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision and the US monthly labor market report.
From an industry perspective, the energy sector was the most popular at the beginning of the week. The S&P 500 Energy Index advanced 3.7 percent. The oil values were shown in a correspondingly strong form. Chevron rose 3.8 percent, Exxon Mobil Corp rose 4.2 percent and ConocoPhilllips rose 5.6 percent.
Among the individual stocks, the stocks of Estee Lauder were the focus of investors with a price increase of 1.9 percent. After strong quarterly figures, the cosmetics company announced a ten percent increase in its quarterly dividend.
The euro exchange rate remained stable in US trading at 1.1639 US dollars. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at 1.1652 (Friday: 1.1698) dollars. The dollar had thus cost 0.8582 (0.8549) euros. On the US bond market, the futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) gained 0.11 percent to 138.27 points. The yield on the ten-year bond was 0.85 percent./edh/zb
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