NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – After the recent strong run on the US stock market, the most important indices remained stable on Monday. Hopes of an end to interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve boosted the stock exchanges over the course of the month, meaning that profits should be posted for July. The reporting season, which has so far gone better than feared, is also providing positive impetus. Almost 80 percent of the companies from the broad S&P 500 index that have already presented their figures have so far exceeded expectations with their quarterly figures, according to capital market strategist Jürgen Molnar from Robomarkets. Around half of the S&P 500 companies have now submitted their reports.
Around two hours before the close of trading, the best-known Wall Street index, the Dow Jones Industrial, rose 0.10 percent to 35,496.42 points, which means an increase of 3.2 percent for July. The market-wide S&P 500 lost 0.01 percent to 4581.66 points. His monthly plus is thus 3.0 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index fell 0.03 percent to 15,746.14 points. For him, the monthly gain is 3.6 percent.
In the Dow, Chevron and in the S&P 100 ExxonMobil each rose 3.1 percent. Both are among the favorites in the indices. ConocoPhillips gained 1.8 percent. Oil prices rose sharply in July. If they had had a negative annual balance for a long time, they are now higher than at the beginning of the year. The prospect of a possible end to interest rate hikes is driving on the demand side. Predominantly robust economic data from the world’s largest economy also improved the mood on the crude oil market. On the supply side, large producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia also significantly reduced their production.
The bottom of the Dow was the paper from Johnson & Johnson (J&J) with minus 4.2 percent. The consumer goods manufacturer suffered another setback in the scandal surrounding suspected asbestos-contaminated baby powder. A US judge had dismissed the drug company’s second attempt to use a subsidiary’s bankruptcy filing to get tens of thousands of cancer victims to drop their lawsuits and accept an $8.9 billion settlement.
Morgan Stanley commented on US software companies, downgrading Salesforce’s stock to “Equal-weight” while upgrading Adobe’s to “Overweight”. Salesforce then fell 0.3 percent on the Dow, while Adobe rose 3.2 percent on the Nasdaq 100. Toymaker Hasbro’s stock benefited from an upgrade by Bank of America and gained 1.9 percent in the broad Nasdaq.
Palantir Technologies shares were up another 8.3 percent after a rally on Friday. A study by the analyst firm Wedbush, which deals with the company’s quality in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), is likely to be the trigger. Wedbush rated the stock “Overweight” with a price target of $25, commenting, “We believe Palantir has built a fortress ring that is second to none. Palantir is poised to be a major player in the AI revolution in the next to be decade.”
Tupperware and Yellow Corp. showed remarkably high trading turnover. The former jumped up by around 36 percent, the latter even by 78 percent. The plastic container maker’s paper had more than tripled in the past week for no apparent reason. According to the trade union responsible, the freight forwarder Yellow wants to shut down its operations and file for bankruptcy.
The market was skeptical about the price movements of the two and referred to the shares as meme papers. These are shares of mostly badly hit companies whose prices are artificially boosted via social media channels such as Reddit or Tiktok and then usually fall significantly./ck/he
ISIN US2605661048 US6311011026 US78378X1072
AXC0258 2023-07-31/20:02
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2023-07-31 18:02:00
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