NEW YORK (awp international) – After the badly failed US labor market report, the Dow Jones Industrial and the S&P 500 rose as high as never before on Friday. The leading index recently gained 0.45 percent to 35,223.68 points and is heading towards a plus of 0.8 percent on a weekly basis. The market-wide S&P advanced 0.20 percent to 4438.04 points.
According to the job data, the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 came under pressure with minus 0.49 percent to 15,107.69 points. The US Federal Reserve makes tightening its monetary policy primarily dependent on improvements in the labor market. If interest rates rise, the high-growth technology companies feel this particularly, as growth financing then becomes more expensive. Apple lost 0.8 percent on Friday.
The US economy created more jobs than expected in July. In addition, hourly wages rose slightly more than expected, while the unemployment rate surprisingly fell significantly to its lowest level since the beginning of the Corona crisis in March 2020.
“It seems as if the US job machine is shifting up a gear and the recovery is accelerating,” said Christian Scherrmann, US economist at the DWS fund company, commenting on the data. “The labor market report shows that more and more people are finding their way back to normal, working longer and even earning a little more.” The positive surprise should bring the US Federal Reserve a step closer to the point at which it holds out the prospect of scaling back bond purchases, according to the economist.
Because banks benefit particularly from a tighter monetary policy with possibly rising interest rates soon – for example through higher income in the lending business – financial stocks recorded strong price gains on Friday. In first place in the Dow, Goldman Sachs rose to a record high and recently gained just under 3.4 percent. JPMorgan followed with a plus of 2.6 percent. Wells Fargo and Bank of America each gained three and a half percent in the S&P 500.
There was little company news before the weekend. The last listless shares of Beyond Meat lost 1.6 percent. The meat substitute manufacturer reported strong sales growth for the second quarter. However, the surprisingly high loss and outlook apparently weighed more heavily on investors. In the current quarter, Beyond Meat expects weaker demand due to the new uncertainty due to the rising number of corona infections, which was reflected in a disappointing sales target.
Novavax slumped 19 percent. The profits of the two previous days have thus been erased. The group postponed plans to submit a registration application for a Covid-19 vaccine from the third to the fourth quarter. Novavax had only postponed its plans to the third quarter in May. In the middle of the week, the news that the EU had secured access to up to 200 million doses of a possible new corona vaccine from the USA triggered a fireworks display among the Novavax papers. / Ajx / he
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