Reluctance due to Fed meeting: S&P 500 turns into the red after a record high

Tuesday March 16, 2021

Reluctance over Fed meeting
S&P 500 turns into the red after a record high

Wall Street is on hold in the face of the two-day Fed meeting. Tech stocks are rushing ahead, but are coming back with slightly rising bond yields. The vaccine manufacturer Moderna increased by 8.6 percent.

On Wall Street, tech indices have added a little on their recent gains. However, the momentum eased noticeably towards the close of trading. The market breadth S&P 500 had made the leap to a high in the course of the year, but closed as did the leading US index Dow Jones Industrial slightly in the red.

Before the meeting of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) this Wednesday, investors held back on the whole. The Dow was down 0.39 percent to 32,825.95 points. Previously, he had set records for six days in a row. The S&P 500 fell 0.16 percent to 3962.71 points after reaching a record high of around 3981 points in the course of trading. The technology-heavy one Nasdaq 100 rose by 0.53 percent to 13,152.28 points.

The Fed meeting is all about the recent rise in bond market yields. The background to this is above all the trillion dollar new stimulus package initiated by the US government, which had fueled fears of an overheating of the economy and rising consumer prices. But this Tuesday came disappointing economic news. In the USA, for example, retail sales fell more sharply than expected in February. Industrial production also fell in February, whereas analysts had expected an increase on average.

Ford loses due to delivery problems

Among the individual values, the shares of ford more than five percent in the S&P 500. Although the carmaker is sticking to its annual targets for 2021, it does not rule out negative effects in view of possible delivery problems for semiconductor components. In addition, Ford announced plans to issue a $ 2 billion convertible bond.

A corporate action also weighed on the shares of Nikolathat buckled by around seven percent. The developer of electric and hydrogen trucks wants to raise 100 million US dollars through the sale of shares and thus complete the production facility in Arizona and expand the infrastructure in general.

The A shares of News Corp had jumped to a record high in the course of trading and ended up gaining 1.4 percent. A few weeks after the passage of a new media law in Australia, an agreement was reached on payments for journalistic content from the media company founded by Rupert Murdoch. The deal initially runs for three years and includes the newspaper "The Australian" and the news portal "news.com.au".

The start of a new study gives Moderna a boost

Australia passed the controversial law at the end of February after a lengthy dispute with Facebook and initially also with Google. The government wants to achieve that advertising revenues are distributed more fairly in the future. The shares of Facebook rose by around two percent and the papers of the Google mother alphabet by a good one percent.

The shares of secured the first place in the Nasdaq 100 Moderna with an increase of 8.6 percent. The vaccine manufacturer had started a large study on the effects of its corona vaccine on babies and children. Immunization of minors is seen as a key to achieving herd immunity in the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, the euro suffered somewhat from the suspension of the Astrazeneca vaccinations in Germany and other important countries in the euro zone and was quoted at 1.1904 US dollars after the market closed. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.1926 (Monday: 1.1920) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8385 (0.8389) euros. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) recently fell by 0.04 percent to 131.90 points. The yield on ten-year government bonds was 1.62 percent.