Euro continues upward trend: US indices take a breather

Tuesday, February 09, 2021

Euro continues upward trend
US indices are taking a breather

After the recent price rally on Wall Street, the leading indices are treading water. Investors continue to focus on Washington, where the Biden administration is working on a new stimulus package. The focus is also on the chemical company DuPont, which is suffering heavily from the corona pandemic.

The US stock markets were directionless and sluggish over the course of the day. Investor interest was again directed towards the US government's planned stimulus package with a volume of 1.9 trillion dollars. Some economists recently voiced concerns that the package could lead to higher inflation. The day before, the leading indices had marked further record highs and, with the sixth trading day in a row, posted the longest profit streak since August 2020.

The Dow Jones Industrial closed with a minus of 0.03 percent at 31,375.83 points. The market breadth S&P 500 lost 0.11 percent to 3911.23 points. The technology-heavy one Nasdaq 100 decreased by 0.06 percent to 13,687.09 points.

The meanwhile quite high valuations of many stocks made investors pause while they cheered the better economic outlook and the global slowdown in corona infection, according to the trade. The inflation expectations approaching their highest level since 2013 also raises the question of when this will pose a threat to equities.

The shares of DuPont with a loss of 3.0 percent in investor focus. The pandemic had pulled the US specialty chemicals company deep into the red last year. For 2020, a loss of almost three billion dollars was on the books, after DuPont had made around half a billion profit in the previous year. However, a profit jumped out in the final quarter.

The papers of Constellation Brands however, rose 2.3 percent to $ 233.80. The analysts at Goldman Sachs had included the stocks of the beer and spirits group in the "Conviction Buy List" of particularly promising investments and raised the target price from 255 to 275 dollars.

On the other hand, a possible deal between the genetic diagnostics specialists Quidel and Qiagen met with a different response. While Qiagen-Shares in New York fell 3.1 percent, rose Quidel-Papers by 1.5 percent. The day before, when speculation first circulated, the price trend had been exactly the opposite. Commerzbank said that if the two companies were to merge, their dependency on corona-relevant sales would be quite high. This holds "challenges" with a view to 2022.

The Euro continued its upward trajectory in US trading, climbing above the $ 1.21 mark. The rate of the common currency was last listed at $ 1.2118. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at $ 1.2104. The dollar had thus cost 0.8262 euros. The prices of US Treasuries rose. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently rose by 0.07 percent to 136.71 points. The yield on the ten-year bond fell to 1.16 percent.