NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors are more defensive on Wall Street on Thursday. Neither the Russian gas flowing back through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline nor a significant interest rate hike by the ECB gave the standard values traded there any clear impetus, which also did not come from mixed company figures. On the technology-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange, the trend was better than the day before.
Der Dow Jones Industrial has been hovering around breakeven over the course after slipping more significantly in early trade. Most recently, he lost 0.16 percent to 31,822.35 points. Other New York indices fared better, managing to slightly surpass six-week highs set the previous day. The market-wide S&P 500 rose by 0.37 percent to 3974.46 points. The Nasdaq 100 even achieved an increase of 0.87 percent to 12,548.14 points.
Investor risk appetite remained subdued as a result of the news, at least for industrial blue chips, which weighed on the Dow. This was reflected, among other things, in US bonds picking up again. The market said investors continued to weigh the impact the latest news would have on growth. Economic data from the USA sent rather bad signals: In addition to weak weekly employment data, the index of leading indicators and the business climate in the Philadelphia region fell more than expected.
Driven by record inflation, the European Central Bank (ECB) has now jumped on the global tightening bandwagon with an interest rate hike of 0.5 percentage points. “The ECB did what it had to do – it didn’t have good options,” said James Athey, head of investments at ABRDN. The downside of the urgently needed fight against inflation is that rapid interest rate hikes harm growth.
Tesla papers became a major support on the Nasdaq: With a recent price jump of ten percent, they made it back over the 800 dollar mark for the first time since May. In the second quarter, the electric car maker almost doubled its quarterly profit despite the corona lockdowns in China and supply chain problems, exceeding analyst estimates. The company now expects a “record-breaking” second half of the year.
Otherwise there was little positive to report about the course. Oil companies like Chevron at a discount of 1.8 percent suffered from falling oil prices and the reporting companies from the Dow rallied among the losers in the leading index. These included the non-life insurer Travelers and the chemical company Dow with price losses of 1.4 and 3.0 percent respectively. Both posted declining quarterly earnings.
Things got really grim for AT&T investors , which, according to figures, had to accept a price slide of 7.8 percent. A reduced free cash flow target was held responsible for this because more and more customers are not paying their telephone bills. The weakness spread across the industry, such as Verizon’s share price declines und T-Mobile US of up to 3.7 percent.
The drop was also great for airline shareholders: United Airlines shares fell after the recent price gains that had generally occurred in the travel industry
and American Airlines by up to ten percent. Although United was back in the black in the second quarter after a long period of losses, analysts had expected more. American Airlines was also not able to convince with its results.
In the second-line stocks area, however, there were also two positive stocks with numbers: Danaher up 8.9 percent and Philip Morris by 3.7 percent. In both cases it was said that the second quarter exceeded expectations. The tobacco group also referred to a robust outlook for the third quarter./tih/he
ISIN US2605661048 US6311011026 US78378X1072
AXC0339 2022-07-21/20:17
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