On Monday, trading on “George Washington Day” paused. Investors are now hoping again that the economy will quickly recover from the corona crisis with the ongoing vaccination campaigns and falling numbers of new infections. Leading indicators seem increasingly to underpin such a scenario. This applies on Tuesday to the Empire State Index for the month of February, which was twice as high as expected. It measures manufacturing operations in New York State.
Other indices followed the Dow and also hit record highs on Tuesday. The S&P 500 recently rose 0.37 percent to 3949.55 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 gained 0.52 percent to 13,879,331 points.
On Tuesday, investors were once again focused on oil prices after the US WTI variety picked up on its most recent soaring. A barrel of the US WTI variety rose to around 60 US dollars, the highest level since the beginning of 2020. The drivers were the weak US dollar and the frosty weather in parts of the USA. Oil stocks benefited from this: those of the industry giant ExxonMobil, for example, rose by around three percent.
There was no price-moving company news from the front row. The shares of the construction machinery company Caterpillar sat in the Dow with an increase of 2.7 percent in second place behind the leader Salesforce. The software company’s shares rose by almost four percent to their highest level since the end of November.
The focus was otherwise on small caps, including the shares in the US auto supplier Borgwarner, which wants to take over the German battery manufacturer Akasol for almost 730 million euros. Borgwarner’s shares rose 4.1 percent.
The shares of Palantir Technologies lost 8.5 percent after the specialist for data analysis software surprised negatively with an expansion of its losses in the past fourth quarter. For the first time since the IPO at the end of September, the shares, which had performed well to date, tested the 50-day average line. This is a popular trend indicator for chart-oriented investors.
At Coherent, after a price jump of almost 14 percent last Friday, the share was no longer so strong that the takeover struggle for the laser manufacturer continues. As it is said, with II-VI a manufacturer of compound semiconductors could top the previous offers. The Coherent shares rose by one percent and those of the bidder candidate by 2.5 percent.
The falling number of infections and the progress made with the vaccination campaign otherwise let investors access the US travel sector again. The shares of the major airlines American Airlines, United and Delta rose by up to 2.5 percent. For those of the cruise lines Royal Caribbean and Carnival, it was even up to six percent.
In return, papers from the health sector were avoided. Even well-valued quarterly figures didn’t help the shares of CVS Health. The papers of the retail company from the pharmaceutical industry were among the clear losers in the S&P 500 with a discount of 3.2 percent.
In contrast, there was a price jump of 14.2 percent for the Ceva share. The technology company surprised with adjusted earnings metrics that exceeded expectations./tih/he
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