NEW YORK (awp international) – At the start of an eventful week, investors in the United States showed courage. The Dow Jones Industrial eventually gained nearly 1.6% to 34,005.04 points. The market-wide S&P 500 rose 1.4% to 3990.56 points. The Nasdaq 100 technology-selective index, which was meanwhile in the red, rose 1.2% to 11,706.44 points.
Foreign exchange experts at Commerzbank talk of a “Fed/ECB double boom” ahead of the key interest rate decision in the eurozone on Thursday, just one day after the Fed. It will be too soon for both central banks to green light the ‘inflation. According to the experts, however, the market expects a rapid decline in inflation. Producer prices have recently been disappointing in this respect. With US consumer price data for November, the next major signal generator for US monetary policy is on Tuesday’s agenda.
The US Federal Reserve is generally expected to raise interest rates by just 0.50 percentage point at its Wednesday meeting. In the last four meetings, the Fed was up 0.75 points.
Takeover reports have caused particularly strong price movements. Shares of enterprise technology platform Coupa Software jumped nearly 27% to $78.79 and closed trading at $78.65. US investment firm Thomas Bravo had announced it would buy Coupa for $81 a share in cash and then sell it privately.
Horizon Therapeutics was up nearly 15.5% to $112.36. The New York-listed Irish biopharmaceutical specialist for rare diseases has been targeted by Amgen. The Americans are offering $116.50 per share in cash. That’s a whopping $26 billion in total. Horizon supports the offer.
The initially suspended collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and Rivian to jointly produce e-transporters pushed shares of the electric car maker more than 6% to their lowest level since July. As announced by both parties, the US company is currently preferring other projects.
The euro once again failed to reach the $1.06 handle and gave up gains in the meantime. Most recently, the common currency cost $1.0535. The European Central Bank had set the key rate at 1.0562 (Friday: 1.0559) dollars. The dollar had therefore cost 0.9468 (0.9471) euros.
After a positive start, US Treasury bond prices fell and as a result yields continued to recover from the previous week’s three-month lows. After the daily low of 3.521%, it has risen to 3.625%./ag/men
