NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors on the US stock exchanges became brave again on Thursday. Two of the four most important stock indices achieved highs: the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite. Banking and technology stocks in particular were favorites. The best-known Wall Street index, the Dow Jones Industrial, once again made the jump over the 31,000 point mark.
In general – in addition to the predominantly positive quarterly balance sheets – further positive economic data provided support. The number of initial jobless claims fell further in the last week of January, while analysts had expected an increase.
With a plus of 1.08 percent to 31,055.86 points, the Dow went out of the day and has already made an impressive gain of 3.6 percent in the course of the week so far. The market-wide S&P 500 closed with a gain of 1.09 percent to 3871.74 points. The market-wide Nasdaq Composite ended trading at 13,777.74 points, which was an increase of 1.23 percent. The Nasdaq Selection Index 100 gained 1.18 percent to 13,560.89 points.
While financial and banking stocks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, American Express and Visa were ahead in the Dow with gains between 1.8 and 3.9 percent, Merck & Co shares were among the few losers. It gave way by 1.7 percent. In the final quarter of 2020, the pharmaceutical company slipped deeply into the red due to high expenses for a drug recall and the takeover of cancer researcher VelosBio. It was also announced that Chief Financial Officer Robert Davis will become the new CEO later this year. Kenneth Frazier will leave office on June 30th.
The competitor Bristol-Meyers Squibb also announced red figures for the past quarter, but is still optimistic about the current year. Shares in the S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent.
On the Nasdaq, however, Ebay and the former subsidiary of the online trading platform, Paypal, made investors happy. The Internet shopping boom in the Corona crisis helped create brilliant businesses, from which the online payment service also benefited. While Ebay papers rose 5.3 percent, PayPal’s rose 7.4 percent.
Qualcomm lost 8.8 percent. The super-fast 5G wireless data transmission caused the chip company to grow by leaps and bounds in the first quarter of the business year and the forecast for the year as a whole was above market expectations, but delivery bottlenecks are a burden.
The euro, which had fallen below $ 1.20 during the day, continued to decline in US trading. At the close of trading on Wall Street, the common currency was priced at $ 1.1965. The European Central Bank set the reference rate at $ 1.1996 (Wednesday: 1.2017). The dollar cost 0.8336 (0.8322) euros. On the US bond market, ten-year government bonds turned positive after further losses initially. The futures contract of these trend-setting Treasuries (T-Note-Future) rose by 0.04 percent to 136.80 points. The yield fell to 1.136 percent./ck/he
By Claudia Müller, dpa-AFX
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