NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Fear of inflation tore down US technology stocks in particular on Thursday. But standard values also suffered considerable losses. The trigger for the sharp downward movement was the rapid rise in yields on the bond market. The interest rate for ten-year US government bonds has now climbed over 1.5 percent and thus to the highest level since February 2020. Higher interest rates make stocks look worse than fixed-income securities.
The US leading index Dow Jones Industrial lost 1.75 percent to 31,402.01 points after climbing over 32,000 points for the first time on Wednesday. The market-wide S&P 500 fell by 2.45 percent to 3829.34 points and the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped by 3.56 percent to 12,828.31 points. It was the largest daily percentage loss since October last year.
Investors are more and more convinced that inflation will increase and cause the central bank to tighten its monetary policy, commented analyst Craig Erlam of the trading house Oanda Europe. The significantly higher yields on the bond market already reflect this concern. Meanwhile, technology stocks are particularly suffering from rising interest rates, as this increases their financing costs. In addition, tech stocks had risen above average in the past few months, and investors are now cashing in more.
Among the biggest losers in the sector, Nvidia’s shares slipped by more than eight percent. A high demand for technology for data centers and graphics cards caused the chip manufacturer’s sales and profits to jump further in the past quarter. During the conference call on the business figures, however, CFO Colette Kress said that the growth is currently the result of the computer games business. Some analysts therefore feared that this could mean that the data center division is expanding a little more slowly. For the shares of the manufacturer of electric cars Tesla it went down by around eight percent.
The vaccine manufacturer Moderna kept high research and development costs in the red at the end of 2020, but the strong demand for the corona vaccine caused sales to explode. The papers rose 2.5 percent at the top of the Nasdaq 100.
The share certificates from Twitter had jumped to a record high in the course of trading and were at the end 3.7 percent in plus. They secured second place in the S&P 500. The short message service aims to double its annual turnover by the end of 2023.
Among the weakest values in the S&P 500, the shares in Best Buy buckled by more than nine percent. The electronics retailer disappointed with its business forecast for this year.
In addition, the excitement about the video game retailer Gamestop never ends. After the shares were temporarily suspended from trading on Wednesday and closed with a plus of 104 percent, it was now up another 19 percent. The vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, sees the price volatility with great concern. They are signs of an “irritating bubble” that has to come to a bad end at some point.
The euro suffered from the rise in yields on the US bond market during the day and was most recently quoted at 1.2169 US dollars. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.2225 (Wednesday: 1.2146 dollars. The dollar cost 0.8180 (0.8233) euros.
The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) fell by 1.02 percent to 133.88 points. The last return on the ten-year bond was 1.49 percent./la/he
By Lutz Alexander, dpa-AFX
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