Friday June 18, 2021
Fed exasperates investors
Wall Street goes deep red into the weekend
Wall Street lives up to its expiration date: this time the prices are going steeply downhill. Because a Fed banker is bringing the end of the low interest rate policy forward, a difficult week ends with a cold shower for investors. At least the vaccine manufacturer Curevac is getting back on its feet a little.
Wall Street ended a weak week clearly in the red. On the day options on indices and individual stocks expired, there was hardly anything to be gained by investors. The mood was weighed down by comments from the President of the Fed of St. Louis, James Bullard, who spoke out in favor of a US rate hike in 2022. That would be much earlier than the two hikes promised by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday towards the end of 2023.
The Dow Jones Industrial almost closed the day’s low with a minus of 1.58 percent at 33,290.08 points. This was the fifth weak trading day in a row and the lowest level since the beginning of April. The US leading index thus posted a weekly loss of almost three and a half percent. The one representing the broad market S&P 500 lost 1.31 percent to 4166.45 points. The technology-heavy one Nasdaq 100 fell 0.81 percent to 14,049.59 points. The day before he had set another record with just over 14,200 points.
On an expiry day, prices can fluctuate noticeably without significant company or economic news. The reason for this is that larger fund or asset managers in particular try to move the prices in the direction they want when the contracts expire.
Financial stocks under pressure
From an industry perspective, energy and financial stocks were particularly under pressure. So the insurer’s papers fell AIG and the investment bank Morgan Stanley by 3.9 and 4.4 percent respectively. The titles of the big bank JPMorgan lost 2.5 percent. The share certificates of the oil company Chevron sagged as the Dow bottom by 3.8 percent.
On the corporate side, the shares of Adobe Systems with a price gain of 2.6 percent and another record high. The software company’s figures for the second quarter clearly exceeded expectations. According to DZ expert Ingo Wermann, they were “convincing across the board”. Adobe is profiting from the relocation of advertising budgets to the Internet and from increasing investments, emphasized the expert.
A little rest for Curevac
The depository receipts of the Tübingen vaccine manufacturer traded in the USA Curevac recovered with a plus of 7 percent somewhat from their almost 40 percent price slump on Thursday. Curevac had to admit on Wednesday that its vaccine, traded as a beacon of hope, had only achieved a preliminary effectiveness of 47 percent against corona disease “of any severity”.
After some substantial losses on the two previous days, the euro fell a little further on Friday. The common currency was last traded at $ 1.1866. At noon it was still above $ 1.19. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at 1.1898 (Thursday: 1.1937) dollars. The dollar had thus cost 0.8405 (0.8377) euros. US Treasuries turned positive after slight opening losses. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently rose by 0.27 percent to 132.38 points. The ten-year bond yield was 1.45 percent.
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