© Reuters
NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – A strong quarterly report from the electric car manufacturer Tesla and a series of data on the US economy caused gains on the US stock exchanges (ETR:) on Thursday. The best-known Wall Street index Industrial, which initially oscillated between moderate gains and losses, gained 0.27 percent to 33,835.66 points around two hours before the market closed.
The market width gained 0.62 percent to 4041.05 points. It advanced by 1.32 percent to 11,970.22 points.
“The US economy was extremely robust in the fourth quarter,” portfolio manager Thomas Altmann of QC Partners assessed the data from the US Department of Commerce. Although the gross domestic product did not increase as strongly as in the third quarter, it still increased by 2.9 percent extrapolated for the year. However, some bank economists continue to fear a recession and point to weakening consumer demand in the USA. Investors on the stock exchanges are therefore now continuing to rely on the US Federal Reserve to proceed cautiously with regard to its interest rate policy.
The markets are currently expecting that the Fed will tighten its monetary policy at the next meeting on Wednesday a little more slowly than at the end of 2022, when it reduced the rate of interest rate hikes from 0.75 to 0.50 percentage points. An increase of 0.25 points is currently expected for the beginning of February. Since a recession is considered possible in the course of the year, interest rate cuts are even expected towards the end of the year.
On the company side, the main focus was on Tesla, because the electric car manufacturer reported record profits in the final quarter of 2022 on Wednesday evening after the market closed. It was also better than expected, easing concerns about demand and profitability that had recently been triggered by price discounts on vehicles. Investors ignored mixed signals on the outlook. CEO Elon Musk warned of a “very difficult recession” with a view to 2023. Should this happen, however, Tesla’s material costs should also drop significantly, it said.
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:) continued the recovery they started at the start of the year and easily surpassed the $150 mark again. Most recently, it went up 9.5 percent to $ 158.09. The increase in the still young year is now around 30 percent. From September to the low at the beginning of the year, however, the course had previously tripled.
Otherwise, the current reporting season has provided mixed signals. The papers from IBM (NYSE:), for example, fell 4.3 percent at the Dow end. The Swiss bank UBS (SIX:), for example, criticized weak margins and a weak outlook for the free cash flow of the computer group, despite quarterly figures that were slightly better than expected.
The papers of the chemical company Dow Inc, which is also listed in the Dow, lost 0.2 percent. The quarterly figures were characterized by destocking in the industry and by customers, and profits declined last year. Now costs are to be saved and around 2,000 jobs worldwide are to be cut.
At the top of the index, on the other hand, they laid Chevron (NYSE:) shares up 4.3 percent as the oil company plans to distribute billions to its shareholders in the face of high profits. From April, shares worth 75 billion US dollars (almost 69 billion euros) are to be bought back. The quarterly dividend was also increased.
Apart from a number of other quarterly reports, the shares in the US subsidiary Qualtrics of the German software group SAP (ETR:) also came into focus. They jumped a little more than 31 percent because the Walldorfer are considering a sale.
