Investors take profits: Wall Street falls behind record levels

Investors take profits
Wall Street is falling behind record levels

The vacation time calms the US stock exchange. The Dow Jones does not reach a new peak value – and closes with a narrow minus compared to the previous day. The lockdown in the Chinese city of Xi’an is affecting individual stocks.

Wall Street ended the penultimate trading day of the year with slight losses. Had in early business Dow Jones how S&P 500 new record highs are still marked with small serves. However, in late trading, investors took profits, with the movements occurring on low volumes. The Dow Jones index closed 0.2 percent lower at 36,398 points, the S&P 500 lost 0.3 percent, the technology-heavy one Nasdaq Composite gave up 0.2 percent. There were a total of 2084 (Wednesday: 1897) course winners and 1257 (1464) losers. 133 (127) titles closed unchanged.

The prices were initially supported by the assumption that the latest wave of pandemics with the currently rampant omicron variant of the coronavirus will damage the economy less than previous waves. At the same time, business was extremely quiet because of the upcoming New Year and the absence of many market participants due to vacation.

Last but not least, the fact that many stocks are at or near record highs has made investors hesitate to push prices any higher. The economic data of the day did not move the market any more. They were both friendly. The number of initial jobless claims decreased surprisingly in the previous week. The purchasing managers’ index for the Chicago region rose faster than expected.

Lockdown affects Micron’s course

Micron Technology 84.41

Fell below the individual values Biogenic by 7.1 percent after the South Korean company Samsung Biologics denied an interest in taking over Biogen. On Wednesday, a report that the South Koreans were planning to buy Biogen for $ 42 billion had pushed the stock 9 percent higher. The shares of Micron traded 2.4 percent lower after the memory chip maker announced that a lockdown in the Chinese city of Xi’an would affect work at one of its facilities. Micron said it is working on workarounds and expects to meet chip manufacturing commitments, but warned that “there may be some short-term delays.”

Oil price
Oil price 78.80

the dollar increased slightly with thin sales; the dollar index rose 0.1 percent. The prospect of the Fed tightening the interest rate screw in the coming year helped here. However, if investors’ concerns about the latest wave of pandemics continue to decrease and investors increasingly withdraw from defensive investments, the dollar, which is popular as a safe-haven currency, should also be dragged down, warned Oanda analyst Jeffrey Halley.

the Oil prices noted little changed. On the one hand, they benefited somewhat from the bullish oil storage data of the previous day. On the other hand, fears that Chinese demand could decline somewhat dampened fears. China has released data on its planned import quotas for 2022. These are 11 percent below those of the same period in the previous year. Yields, which had risen significantly the previous day, came back on the bond market. Here, too, market participants did not want to attach too much importance to the movements due to the thin trade.

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