Stocks New York: Restrained trading start

The same applies to the other major New York indices, whose records will soon be a week old. The market-wide S&P 500 last fell just under 0.04 percent to 4171.72 points on Thursday. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 just got the hang of it, adding 0.05 percent to 13,941.72 points.

The record rally had stalled due to concerns about an already very high stock valuation, it was said by stock exchange traders. While the well-started reporting season for US companies is no longer helping, concerns are currently increasing again about the still high levels of Covid 19 infections and new mutations around the world. “There are growing concerns that this could derail the global growth boom after investors recently stocked up in stocks in anticipation of a recovering global economy,” said a market expert.

Current economic data from the USA hardly had any impact. The number of initial claims for US unemployment benefits fell again in the previous week, although analysts had expected an increase. The financial markets also focused on the European Central Bank’s interest rate decision. Investors drew the conclusion that the monetary authorities remain on alert because of the third corona wave in Europe.

Among the individual values, the quarterly reports presented on Thursday were mostly positive. The shares of the telecommunications giant AT&T and the conglomerate Danaher then posted significant price gains of around 4.5 percent. In both cases, the results exceeded the average analyst forecast.

However, shares in the US chemical company Dow Inc lost 5.5 percent after the figures were presented. Experts suspected that investors are now taking profits after the convincing figures. The paper has grown by a good 15 percent since the beginning of the year.

Biogen fell 2.7 percent. It is true that the published figures were also above the average forecast of the group of analysts here. Matthew Harrison of the US bank Morgan Stanley was able to discover “no big surprises”. Investors continued to focus on the upcoming FDA ruling on the company’s Alzheimer’s drug.

The corona crisis kept American Airlines deep in the red at the beginning of the year. Since things went much worse in the previous quarters, the shares started trading nicely, but then turned into the red by about one percent due to the increased pandemic worries.

Under these circumstances, the shares of some companies that were considered winners in the pandemic but had recently come back from their highs were in demand. Among them were the home fitness specialist Peloton, whose papers recovered with an increase of 4.7 percent. The video conference service provider Zoom also posted a 4.4 percent price increase.

Meanwhile, the SAP market research subsidiary Qualtrics, which went public in the USA at the end of January, caused a stir. The shares reacted with a price jump of 20 percent to several upgrades by analysts after the company had presented figures for the first quarter the evening before the stock market closed. The surprisingly high level of optimism when looking at the sales development in the current quarter was particularly praised. The paper thus recovered significantly from a slide that began shortly after the initial listing./tih/he

(AWP)

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