ROUNDUP / New York Stocks: Records remain within reach with a solid start

NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The Dow Jones Industrial started trading on Friday with profits. With a plus of 0.30 percent to 31,587.20 points, it continued its recovery that began the day before in the course of trading. With the friendly start, the New York benchmark index remained within reach of its record high of just under 31,644 points, which it had reached in the middle of the week. He is currently heading for a weekly plus of 0.4 percent.

On the last trading day of the week, the recent discussion of a return in inflation lost some of its relevance. The recently dominant concerns about a significant rise in interest rates and the associated price losses on the stock market faded into the background after the situation on the bond market had recently eased. Instead, familiar topics such as the corona situation or company news came back into focus.

Against this background, the other New York indices also gained a bit on Friday, so that they too stayed in touch with their latest records. The market-wide S&P 500 rose 0.27 percent to 3924.68 points, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 0.17 percent to 13,661.25 points.

Applied Materials, among others, provided good news on Friday. The manufacturer of equipment for the semiconductor industry pleased investors with a robust forecast, as a result of which shares on the Nasdaq 100 top jumped 8.7 percent to a new record high. The order books are currently filling up because customers are ramping up their production due to the current shortage of microchips. As a result, the shares of the competitor Lam Research rose 3.2 percent.

At Deere, too, things are currently running smoothly: The manufacturer of agricultural and construction machinery has raised its forecast and has thus reacted to the better business of customers in the agricultural sector. The shares shot up eleven percent to the next high. Here, too, a competitor, Caterpillar, was given wings. Its shares also remained on the hunt for records, they were among the favorites in the Dow with an increase of 3.7 percent.

Uber’s shares got off to a weak start after the driver service operator suffered a setback in a year-long struggle for driver status in a UK legal battle. However, they then turned up 1.5 percent, although the court decided that the drivers should be treated as employees. Uber had appealed on this matter following the decision of previous instances.

There was also news on the question of global vaccine distribution. As the White House announced before a meeting of the seven major economic nations (G7) this Friday, US President Joe Biden wants to support the global Covax vaccination initiative with up to four billion US dollars. In the course of this, it became known that the vaccine researcher Novavax wants to supply the initiative with a billion vaccine doses. Its vaccine is still in the final study phases. Novavax shares rose nearly six percent./tih/he

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