NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The pattern of the past few days on the US stock market was repeated on Friday: Another sharp rise in yields on the bond market put technology stocks under pressure, while the Dow Jones Industrial continued its record hunt for the fifth day in a row. At the end of the day, the leading index posted an increase of 0.90 percent to 32,778.64 points and thus crowned a strong week that brought it an increase of more than four percent.
Investors currently see catch-up potential in standard stocks, cyclicals and stocks of the “old economy”. The rising yields, however, have been troubling the highly valued technology stocks for some time. On Friday the Nasdaq 100 lost 0.89 percent to 12,937.29 points. Tech stocks also slowed down in the S&P 500, with the index making little progress with plus 0.10 percent to 3943.34 points.
The prices of US Treasuries fell significantly. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently fell by 0.49 percent to 131.84 points. In return, the yield on ten-year government bonds rose to around 1.63 percent.
Equity strategist Marc Häfliger of Credit Suisse wrote on Friday that the rising returns due to improved growth prospects supported the rotation in equity segments that would have suffered during the pandemic and are now benefiting in particular from the recovery of the economies and the nearing end of the pandemic.
Tech stocks such as Salesforce, Apple, Intel or Microsoft posted losses of between 1.7 and 0.6 percent in the Dow, but the papers of the aircraft manufacturer Boeing as a representative of the “old economy” were again ahead with plus 6.8 percent. Caterpillar, a cyclical construction company, gained 4.2 percent behind Boeing.
Boeing brought in another order after the re-registration of its unlucky 737 Max. The investment company “777 Partners” signed a contract for 24 jets of this type. The shares benefit from the aviation industry’s hope that the corona crisis will end soon. In this week alone they have won more than a fifth.
According to the company, a vaccine candidate from the US manufacturer Novavax offers a high level of protection against the original corona virus and the highly contagious British variant. The effectiveness against “mild, moderate and severe illnesses caused by the original Covid-19 strain” is 96.4 percent, said Novavax. The shares gained more than eight percent.
The euro was trading at $ 1.1961 after the US market closed. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at 1.1933 (Thursday: 1.1969) dollars, the dollar thus cost 0.8380 (0.8355) euros./ajx/fba
By Achim Jüngling, dpa-AFX
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