NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – On Wall Street, the air is out for the time being. The US leading index Dow Jones Industrial fell on Wednesday by 0.97 percent to 30,636.81 points, after having closed for three days with certain fluctuations in the area just below 31,000 points. In general, it has recently been said that the rally on the international stock exchanges has reached its limits for the time being because of the virus that continues to spread.
The market-wide S&P 500 dropped 1.32 percent to 3798.69 points. For the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100, it fell 1.24 percent to 13,322.66 points.
The focus was on mixed reactions to quarterly reports in the middle of the week, but also on the persistent distortions in stocks that were previously popular with short speculators. In addition, investors went on the defensive before the interest rate decision of the US Federal Reserve and the quarterly figures of the US stock market heavyweights Apple, Facebook and Tesla, said stockbrokers. Mutations in the coronavirus also made it difficult to contain the pandemic and investors then questioned an economic recovery.
On Wednesday it was now a matter of exploiting good Microsoft figures. The software giant significantly exceeded expectations in the past quarter, mainly thanks to a strong cloud business. This is a welcome surprise for investors, said analyst Raimo Lenschow of Barclays Bank. He sees Microsoft as a kind of mandatory investment in a volatile year. The shares rose 1.6 percent.
At the top of the Dow, the shares of 3M expanded their price gains from the previous day and rose by around six percent. The conglomerate had positively surprised on Tuesday with a business development that was recently above expectations. Now the analysts at JPMorgan wrote that the shares were “valued too low to be ignored”.
Elsewhere in the recently overheated tech sector, however, investors took profits. As it was said, on Wednesday they were relying on recently below average values. The chip companies AMD and Texas Instruments had given optimistic outlooks, but the shares were down 3.4 and 3.5 percent respectively.
The biggest headlines, however, continued to be made by the roller coaster shares of the troubled computer game retailer Gamestop, which have been exposed to the battle of strength between so-called short speculators and their opponents for days. The latter is said to have recently mobilized in Internet forums, on Wednesday they were still on the lever.
Among the short-sellers as “victims” who bet on falling prices, the name of the hedge fund Melvin Capital was most recently mentioned. According to statements by a manager to the television broadcaster CNBC, it has now completely closed its short positions in Gamestop. The jump in stocks is not over for the time being, however: The stocks soared to a record high of $ 380 and were most recently 109 percent up.
Buy-in purchases by short sellers also drove the shares of the world’s largest cinema chain AMC, which was recently traded as a bankruptcy candidate, to astronomical heights. At times, the papers had jumped 310 percent, most recently there was an increase of 228 percent to Buche./la/he
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