NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The buying mood of investors on New York’s Wall Street continued at the end of the week. Friday is the fifth consecutive day of profits for the Dow Jones Industrial. Since the record high reached at the end of January, it came close to around 20 points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq indices, on the other hand, have already exceeded their highs again.
According to market observers, however, the positive impulses did not come from the US labor market report for January, as it disappointed in parts. Above all, drive the hope of a general sustainable economic recovery, it said. Especially in view of the ongoing vaccination campaigns and the expected Corona aid package. Accordingly, the stock exchanges are “currently quite immune to negative news,” as Portfolio Manager Thomas Altmann from QC Partners said.
Around two hours before the close of trading, the Dow rose 0.32 percent to 31,154.56 points. His weekly plus is currently just under 4 percent.
For the market-wide S&P 500, it rose 0.45 percent to 3889.34 points on Friday. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 recently rose 0.50 percent to 13,628.45 points.
Regarding the US labor market, Altmann wrote: “The good news is that the US labor market is growing again. The bad news is that it is growing very slowly.” All in all, the report shows that the current Covid-19 wave is not a tragedy for the US economy, but that it is still costing considerable growth.
According to the US Department of Labor, the monthly unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 6.3 percent in January. Analysts, however, had expected an unchanged rate. However, the increase in employment was disappointing: instead of an expected increase of 105,000 jobs, employment outside of agriculture only increased by 49,000.
Among the individual stocks at the top of the Dow, the shares of Nike rose 2.8 percent. In Europe, stocks like Puma or Adidas had risen after industry colleague Columbia Sportswear was able to impress with surprisingly strong quarterly figures. The shares of outdoor equipment gained 14.5 percent.
Johnson & Johnson gained 1.4 percent. The pharmaceutical and consumer goods company applied to the US FDA for emergency approval for its corona vaccine.
Ford’s shares rose 2.7 percent. The second largest US automaker was deeply in the red at the end of the year, but wants to significantly increase investments in electric vehicles. In addition, Ford posted earnings per share on an adjusted basis rather than an expected loss.
The Snapchat photo app gained 16 million daily users in the past quarter. At the same time, however, the forecast for the current quarter was disappointing. The shares of the operating company Snap fluctuated between profits and losses and recently rose by 4.8 percent.
For the papers of T-Mobile US it went down by 4.1 percent. The takeover of smaller rival Sprint had driven the growth of the US subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom in the past year, but here too the forecast was disappointing, with a view to profit.
Magnite’s shares shot up by 27.4 percent. The technology company, which specializes in advertising services, wants to take over RTL’s advertising subsidiary SpotX. / Ck / he
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