(Photo: AP)
new York Positive economic data spurred the US stock exchanges on Wednesday. The US standard value index Dow Jones closed 0.7 percent higher to 35,753 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq advanced 1.2 percent to 15,521 points. The broad S&P 500 gained 1.0 percent to 4696 points.
The mood of US consumers brightened significantly in December despite ongoing corona worries. The barometer for consumer mood rose to 115.8 points from a revised 111.9 points in November, as the Institute Conference Board announced to its survey. Economists had only expected a slight increase. According to this survey, consumer mood is surprisingly robust despite the continued rampant delta variant of the virus and the highly contagious new Omikron mutant.
In addition, the US economy grew faster than expected in the summer and is likely to grow faster in 2021 than it has been in decades. The gross domestic product (GDP) rose in the third quarter on an annualized basis by 2.3 percent, as the Ministry of Commerce announced. In an earlier estimate, it was 2.1 percent. In the second quarter, the gross domestic product even increased by 6.7 percent.
According to the Fed, the economy recently ran at a moderate to moderate pace. Economists surveyed by Reuters expect that GDP could rise by 5.6 percent for the full year – the highest rate since 1984. In Corona year 2020, the economy collapsed by 3.4 percent.
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US stock market expert Koch: “The volatility at the end of the year remains exceptionally high”
Look at the individual values
Pfizer & Merck: For the individual stocks, investors took advantage of Pfizer and Merck, among others. Their shares each gained around one percent. Great Britain ordered an additional 4.25 million doses of the respective coronavirus drugs from the pharmaceutical companies. The US FDA has granted emergency approval for Pfizer’s antiviral pill Paxlovid.
Cocrystal: Cocrystal stocks rose 3.3 percent. According to the information, the drug company’s coronavirus agent, which comes from the same group of active ingredients as the Pfizer drug, was effective in the fight against Omikron.
Tesla: Also in demand were Tesla papers, which were 7.5 percent more expensive. Company boss Elon Musk threw further shares with a volume of 528 million dollars on the market, but at the same time signaled that he did not want to part with further packages for the time being. The billionaire wants to use the sales to settle tax claims.
Alibaba: The titles of Alibaba, however, lost 4.2 percent. The government in Beijing canceled a government contract for the online retailer’s cloud division because the company had not taken sufficient care of cyber security. According to a newspaper report, Alibaba informed too late about the recently discovered vulnerability in the widespread software element Apache Log4j.
Caterpillar: Caterpillar benefited at the top of the Dow with plus 1.9 percent from a positive analyst comment. Bernstein Research had upgraded the construction machinery manufacturer’s paper to “Outperform” and raised the price target from $ 200 to $ 240. At the back of the Dow were the titles of the sporting goods manufacturer Nike with minus 0.7 percent, which paid a little tribute to their previous day’s growth of more than six percent.
BlackBerry: It also went down for BlackBerry, although the software house had presented a quarterly result above market expectations. The sales of the cybersecurity division have shrunk for the third quarter in a row and the outlook for this division is disappointing, criticized analyst Steven Li from investment advisor Raymond James. The US-listed BlackBerry shares fell one percent.
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