NEW YORK (awp international) – US stock markets did not take a clear direction on Wednesday ahead of the release of the Fed minutes. After a friendly start to trading, profits quickly crumbled again. Fears of a recession are still causing a great deal of nervousness and an overall depressed mood, even though the heavily battered, technology-heavy Nasdaq stock market has recently picked up again slightly. Slightly better than expected service sector ISM data added to investor nervousness.
The Dow Jones Industrial lost 0.31 percent to 30,870.42 points around two hours before the market closed. The day before, the Wall Street index had temporarily slipped below 30,400 points. It then managed to recoup most of its losses in late trading. The market-wide S&P 500 fell by 0.12 percent to 3826.98 points in the middle of the week. The Nasdaq 100, on the other hand, rose 0.23 percent to 11,806.71 points. However, he had lost particularly badly in the past week.
Helaba pointed out that the specifications for the ISM Purchasing Managers’ Index for Services were actually negative. Nevertheless, in June it fell less sharply than forecast. It is also positive that it – like the much-noticed ISM for the industry – is still in the growth area, it said. From this point of view, however, there should hardly be anything standing in the way of a further sharp hike in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) in July. The minutes of the meeting in the evening should also indicate this.
This is a double-edged sword for investors. They are concerned that the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes 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, it is worth looking at the chip 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 the day before, fell by a further 1.1 percent.
Amazon rose 0.6 percent. 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.
Saber Corp shares gained 3.7 percent, benefiting from a positive Bank of America study. The shares of the provider of technical solutions for the travel and tourism industry have fallen sharply by 44 percent in the past three months, but the fundamentals are intact, the analysts wrote. They therefore upgraded the stock from “Underperform” to “Buy”./ck/stw
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