NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The US stock exchanges suffered from profit-taking on Wednesday after their record hunt. Investors grew increasingly concerned that rising tensions between the United States and Iran could hurt prospects for a peace deal. The result of mutual attacks was further rising oil prices. New tariff threats from US President Donald Trump were added as a topic.
Although the NASDAQ 100 set another record at the start, it ended trading 0.29 percent lower at 30,571.24 points. Wall Street’s leading index, the Dow Jones Industrial, fell by 1.21 percent to 50,687.07 points. For the S&P 500, a nine-day winning streak ended with a discount of 0.74 percent to 7,553.68 points.
Although negotiations are underway to extend the ceasefire that has been in effect for almost two months, the USA and Iran fought overnight one of the most serious firefights since the ceasefire began. UBS experts warned of “growth risks from a sustained energy shock,” which also made major monetary policy tightening unlikely.
However, economic data presented a robust picture on Wednesday. Before the official jobs report comes out on Friday, figures from private service provider ADP showed, according to JPMorgan economist Bennett Parrish, that the US labor market “on a firmer foundation”. In addition, sentiment barometers in the service sector pointed to continued growth. The corresponding ISM index brightened more than expected in May.
Trump’s tariff threats are directed against a total of 60 countries, arguing that they did not prevent imports of products from suspected forced labor or did not adequately review existing import bans. Accordingly, the European Union (EU), Great Britain and Switzerland as well as Canada and China must expect additional tariffs of between 10 and 12.5 percent.
Broadly speaking, tech stocks lacked the fuel for a further rise. In some cases, however, the AI euphoria continued, as Marvell Technology showed with another almost four percent share price increase. The day before, price fireworks had been linked to the fact that NVIDIA boss Jensen Huang believed the company could climb into the group of companies with a valuation of one trillion dollars.
There were increased price gains in chip stocks: Intel shares recovered by 4.4 percent from the latest setback, which was justified by the threat of competition from Nvidia in the PC main processor business. Titles from Intel’s competitor AMD (AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)) achieved almost as much and set another record.
In the tech sector as a whole, however, the picture was mixed, because apart from a recovery at the social media giant Meta (Meta Platforms (ex Facebook)), there were no winners among the seven most important giants in the industry. Software stocks continued their recent swings with losses, as Microsoft showed with a discount greater than three percent. IT stocks that have recently performed well, such as IBM, suffered from profit-taking.
This was also the case with the shares of Palo Alto Networks, which fell by 5.6 percent from their record level. The IT security company had pleasantly surprised with an increased profit outlook for the current quarter, but investors believe that the company’s potential in the area of AI threats has been priced in.
GameStop’s stocks, on the other hand, jumped six percent. The video game retailer significantly increased its sales in the last quarter and achieved a record profit. He also wants to buy back his own shares worth two billion US dollars.
In the Dow, shares of Sherwin-Williams rose by 1.2 percent after falling in recent days. The paint and paint manufacturer and its Japanese industry colleague Nippon Paint Holdings (Nippon Paint) have abandoned their plans to take over Akzo Nobel due to resistance from the Dutch./tih/he