Kabul attack pushes US stocks into the red | Financial

On Thursday, there were at least two explosions at an entrance to Kabul airport and an adjacent hotel. Another shooting followed. The radical movement Islamic State (IS) now claims to be behind the attack, which also killed dozens of Afghans.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the session with a 0.5 percent loss at 35,213.12 points. The broad S&P 500 fell 0.6 percent to 4470.00 points. Tech gauge Nasdaq also ended with a loss of 0.6 percent, at 14,945.81 points.

To support the economy in times of crisis, the Fed has been pumping tens of billions a month into the financial system for some time now. Investors are hoping for more clarity in the coming days about when the Fed will start phasing out the support measures, also to prevent the economy from overheating. Esther George of the central bank in Kansas is one of the Fed executives who believes the time is right. Even now that the Delta variant of the coronavirus creates more risks, she says that phasing out support will not lead to a derailment of the economy, she said.

Software company Salesforce was one of the climbers with a plus of almost 3 percent. The company raised expectations for the full year as it released its quarterly earnings, helped by the positive effects of its previous multi-billion dollar acquisition of Slack. That is a rival of, among others, Microsoft in the field of communication services for the office.

Cosmetics group Coty further gained almost 15 percent after better-than-expected results. Investors actually did not react to a Russian multimillion-dollar fine for Booking.com. The parent company of the hotel booking site, Booking Holdings, advanced almost 1 percent despite that penalty.

The euro was worth $1.1754, against $1.1761 at the close of European markets earlier in the day. A barrel of US oil cost 0.7 percent less at $67.88. Brent oil fell 1 percent at $71.55 a barrel.

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