NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The US stock markets recovered somewhat on Thursday from their mid-week price slide. After the disappointment about a lack of stimulus from the US Federal Reserve had dominated the picture on Wednesday, investors now concentrated on overall rather robust economic data. The number of weekly initial jobless claims fell surprisingly significantly.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial went 0.99 percent higher at 30,603.36 points from trading, but had meanwhile been more than 2 percent in the plus. With the broader S&P 500 it went up on Thursday by 0.98 percent to 3787.38 points. Among the technology indices, the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.68 percent to 13,201.53 points.
The quarterly reports of some stock market heavyweights provided a topic of conversation. Apple’s shares fell 3.5 percent at the end of the Dow. The iPhone manufacturer had made a record profit in the Christmas quarter. In view of the historically high valuation of the papers, the upside potential is now exhausted, judged analyst David Vogt from the Swiss bank UBS.
Tesla’s shares also lost more than three percent. The statements of the manufacturer of electric cars about the deliveries this year are “vague”, complained analyst Brian Johnson of the Barclays Bank. Here the market has been waiting for more precise forecasts.
The shares of Facebook could not maintain moderate gains in the meantime and fell 2.6 percent in the end. The world’s largest online network continued to grow unchecked during the pandemic. However, the company spoke of “significant imponderables” in the future.
In the S&P 500, American Airlines’ shares soared by a good nine percent. The airline had posted a smaller loss in the final quarter than had been expected on the market. Among the favorites in the Dow, the papers of the credit card provider American Express, the chip manufacturer Intel and the entertainment company Walt Disney won between 4.3 and 5.4 percent.
Meanwhile, the focus remained on the unusual price capers in the shares of the video game retailer Gamestop and other companies. The exchange supervisory authority and the Ministry of Finance are alarmed and calls for stricter regulation are getting louder because of the high risk of loss. Recently, shares of a number of troubled companies, against which professional investors such as hedge funds bet, have become objects of speculation for smaller investors who organize themselves on the Internet. As a result, price gains in the three-digit percentage range were achieved.
The Gamestop shares fluctuated very strongly this Thursday and finally plummeted by a good 44 percent. The papers of the world’s largest cinema chain AMC, which was recently considered a bankruptcy candidate, collapsed by almost 57 percent. An important reason for the countermovement on Thursday was that some trading platforms such as the Robinhood app, which is popular with small investors, had temporarily excluded the companies because of the price volatility.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro benefited from the good mood on the financial markets and was most recently quoted at 1.2119 US dollars. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.2091 (Wednesday: 1.2114) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8270 (0.8254) euros. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) fell 0.15 percent to 137.28 points in view of the gains on Wall Street. In return, the yield on the ten-year bond rose to 1.05 percent./la/he
By Lutz Alexander, dpa-AFX
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