NEW YORK (awp international) – The US stock exchanges closed with moderate gains on Wednesday after nervous ups and downs. The Dow Jones Industrial found its way back above the 31,000 point mark. The positive momentum came after a directionless run with the release of the US Federal Reserve Minutes. However, there was nothing really new, as brokers said. Because: In view of the high inflation, the monetary watchdogs held out the prospect of further significant interest rate hikes for this month, as expected. The economic data published in the middle of the week were probably interpreted differently at the same time.
The Dow closed up 0.23 percent to 31,037.68 points. The day before, the Wall Street index had temporarily slipped below 30,400 points and had continued its losses from the past week. It was only in late trading that he then managed to recoup most of his daily losses.
After some back and forth, the market-wide S&P 500 ultimately rose by 0.36 percent to 3845.08 points on Wednesday. The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.62 percent to 11,852.59 points. However, it had fallen by more than four percent in the past week and was therefore particularly strong.
The bearish but better-than-expected ISM service sector sentiment data was interpreted differently in the market. Some pointed out that the June data were weaker than before. From this they drew hope that the statements in the minutes might be out of date. The others pointed out that sentiment in the service sector had deteriorated less than expected. In addition, ISM services – like the important ISM for industry – continue to grow. As a result, there should hardly be anything standing in the way of a further sharp hike in interest rates in July, it said.
Aggressive rate moves are a double-edged sword for investors as they could stall the economy and push it into recession. The central bank, on the other hand, sees itself forced to take countermeasures in view of the high inflation.
Among the individual stocks, the focus was primarily on the technology sector. The day before, the Bloomberg news agency had reported, citing insiders, that the US government was pushing for an export ban to China for certain systems from the Dutch chip production company ASML. This involves so-called DUV systems, which are no longer state-of-the-art, but are used to produce many standard electronic chips for cars, smartphones and robots. The ASML papers, which had already lost almost 4 percent on the Nasdaq on Tuesday, fell by a further 0.8 percent.
Amazon rose 0.7 percent on the Nasdaq. Industry giant Just Eat Takeaway and the world’s largest internet retailer are joining forces in the highly competitive food delivery business in the United States. US customers of Amazon’s Prime payment plan can use the subscription version of the Grubhub delivery service free of charge for one year, with no delivery fees. Amazon also secured a stake of up to 15 percent in Grubhub through options.
A positive Bank of America study gave Saber stock a boost. They rose by 3.5 percent. The shares of the provider of technical solutions for the travel industry have fallen sharply by 44 percent in the past three months, but the fundamentals are intact, the analysts wrote. They therefore upgraded Saber from “Underperform” to “Buy”.
The euro, which fell below $1.02 for the first time in 20 years on Wednesday, was trading at $1.0185 on Wall Street at the close. The European Central Bank set the reference rate at 1.0177 (Tuesday: 1.0290) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9826 (0.9718) euros. US government bonds gave way after a positive start: The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note Future) lost 0.79 percent to 118.97 points. In return, the yield on ten-year government bonds rose to 2.93 percent
— By Claudia Müller, dpa-AFX —
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