New York equities: Corona uncertainty causes significant losses

NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors on Wall Street have shifted back into reverse after the recent price gains. The most important stock indices fell significantly on Monday. Investors acted more cautiously because of the continued smoldering uncertainty surrounding the Omikron coronavirus variant and the unbroken high inflation. Against this background, the coming days will be dominated by monetary policy – including the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial fell 0.85 percent on Monday to 35,665.64 points. The market-wide S&P 500 lost 0.72 percent to 4678.02 meters. For the technology-oriented Nasdaq 100 it was 1.12 percent to 16 148.70 points down.

“In view of the constant high inflation in the United States, the markets expect further signals in terms of interest rate turnaround,” said market observer Timo Emden with a view to the Fed meeting. The Federal Reserve is expected to respond to high inflation and accelerate the exit from its extremely loose stance. At the moment, however, the market is again asking to what extent Omikron could restrict its monetary policy leeway again.

The corona worries that flared up again had a particularly negative impact on stocks from the aircraft and travel industries. Boeing’s papers fell by almost four percent at the Dow end. For the shares of the airlines American Airlines and United Airlines it went down by around five and almost six percent respectively. The shareholders of the cruise operator Royal Caribbean had to cope with a minus of almost five percent. Renewed tightening of the corona regulations would hit companies from these sectors hard again.

At the top of the Dow, Coca-Cola shares rose 2.6 percent. Analyst Andrea Teixeira from the JPMorgan bank counted on growth in the brewing group in the coming year in a study. In addition, the strong brand suffered less from cost pressure and, on top of that, the papers were cheap.

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which is listed in the S&P 500, plans to take over the pharmaceutical company Arena Pharmaceuticals. Pfizer is offering arena stockholders $ 100 per security for this purpose. Arena Pharmaceuticals’ shares soared by a good 80 percent to around $ 90, and Pfizer investors were also pleased, as the increase of almost 5 percent showed.

Among technology stocks, Apple stocks initially continued their record run before the momentum subsided in the face of the weak overall market. In the early days of trading, the computer company almost cracked the $ 3 trillion mark for the first time in terms of market capitalization. Most recently, the shares were listed just under one percent in the red.

Qualcomm’s papers had also reached a record high in early trading and were recently still moderately positive. Here JPMorgan anticipates a revaluation of the semiconductor manufacturer’s shares and added them to a list of particularly promising investments. The expert Samik Chatterjee relies on the tailwind of decreasing supply bottlenecks in the chip sector./la/men

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