The number of corona cases in the USA continues to rise – and that also affects the Dow Jones leading index.
The corona pandemic also slowed share prices in the United States in the middle of the week.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial, which had risen to a record high on Monday, lost 1.08 percent on Wednesday to 34,960.69 points, thus expanding the losses from the previous day. In the last few minutes of trading, prices came under increasing pressure.
“The number of cases in the USA continues to rise, the more complete data for the last few days still show no easing,” wrote economist Christoph Weil from Commerzbank. The seven-day incidence was last over 270, almost four times as high as a month ago. Despite these numbers, the willingness to vaccinate has only increased slightly.
The market-wide S&P 500, which had also reached a record high at the beginning of the week, fell 1.07 percent to 4400.27 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 lost 0.97 percent to 14,857.92 points.
The minutes of the last meeting of the US Federal Reserve had little influence on the exchange rate. The members of the Fed disagreed with regard to when they could start reducing bond purchases. The central bank is currently buying government and mortgage securities worth US $ 120 billion a month. Many stock exchange traders fear that an early reduction in purchases could put the stock markets under pressure because it would deprive the markets of liquidity.
Meanwhile, new business reports from companies showed light and shadow. At the hardware store chain Lowe’s, the shareholders could look forward to a price rally of almost ten percent. Both earnings per share and sales exceeded expectations. The fact that sales declined in the home market did not seem to bother investors – unlike its competitor Home Depot, whose numbers had been received negatively the previous day and had also dragged Lowe’s shares down. But unlike the management of Home Depot, which did not trust itself to forecast the year, the management of Lowe’s raised the targets for 2021.
The title of Target, however, lost 2.8 percent. At the retailer – so far one of the biggest winners of the corona pandemic in terms of share price – sales momentum slackened in the second quarter, which was particularly evident in online retail. Profitability also weakened.
Shares on the Chicago options exchange CBOE initially jumped 11.5 percent, but then gave up all of the gains and closed in the red. According to a report in the Financial Times, the Chicago-based counterparty CME has submitted a takeover offer to the CBOE valued at 16 billion US dollars. However, the CME denied the report. Your shares lost just under four percent.
At the top of the Dow, the papers of the software developer Salesforce sat with plus 1.7 percent. The investment bank Goldman Sachs raised the price target for the shares to 335 US dollars, giving them more than 30 percent upside potential.
Cree shares fell 9.2 percent. The semiconductor manufacturer fell short of expectations with its sales target for the current quarter.
The euro fell slightly in late US currency trading and was most recently trading at $ 1.1709. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.1723 (Tuesday: 1.1767) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8530 (0.8498) euros. On the US bond market, the futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) fell by 0.10 percent to 134.12 points. The yield on ten-year government bonds was 1.27 percent.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
