NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – With dwindling hopes of an interest rate pause in September and concerns in the semiconductor sector, the US stock exchanges are likely to open weaker on Thursday. Three quarters of an hour before the start, the broker IG valued the leading index Dow Jones Industrial (Dow Jones 30 Industrial) with minus 0.2 percent to 34,366 points. The technology-heavy selection index NASDAQ 100 is expected to be 1.2 percent lower at 15,186 points.
In the USA, the labor market continues to be surprisingly robust. In the past week, the number of initial applications for unemployment benefits fell by 13,000 to 216,000. Economists, on the other hand, had expected an increase to 233,000 initial applications. The US Federal Reserve is following its lead monetary policy also in the development of the labor market. If this is robust and inflationary pressure persists, expectations of a break in interest rates in September are likely to increasingly decline.
Apple (Apple) are likely to expand their high previous day’s losses of minus 3.6 percent, the pre-market minus amounted to 3.3 percent. The reason for the weakness are planned iPhone bans in China. According to insiders, the country wants to partially ban employees of state-supported employers and state-owned companies from using iPhones at work, in addition to certain officials. With the iPhone ban, China is heating up the technology and trade war with the USA, wrote market observer Thomas Altmann from asset manager QC Partners. This didn’t go down well with stock market investors. Stocks from the semiconductor sector could come under pressure on Thursday, as they did in Europe.
The shares of the burger chain McDonald’s (McDonalds) benefited with plus 0.9 percent from an upgrade to “Overweight” by the bank Wells Fargo.
Gamestop (GameStop) initially rose by six percent before the market, with the video game retailer’s titles reacting to better-than-expected sales and a smaller-than-expected loss in the second quarter. Most recently, however, they were two and a half percent lower./ajx/jha/