NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – US technology stocks remained under pressure on Friday. Recent concerns about inflation and interest rates have once again weighed on the sector.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 fell 0.79 percent to 12,283.69 points. The market-wide S&P 500 fell 0.19 percent to 4073.85 points.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial (Dow Jones 30 Industrial), on the other hand, rose slightly to 33,703.66 points. On a weekly basis, however, there are signs of a drop of a good half a percent.
The announcement by Russia that it would cut oil production from March because of the price cap for Russian crude oil decided by the West drove up oil prices on Friday. “Rising oil prices are fueling inflation concerns,” said analyst Salah Bouhmidi from trading house IG.
And with rising inflation, investors ultimately fear that interest rates will continue to rise. Higher interest rates, in turn, tend to weigh on the stock market because other asset classes become more attractive as a result. Yields rose ahead of the weekend in the bond market.
Against this background, technology stocks in particular continued to be avoided, because their often high valuations are usually fed by the hope of high profits in the future. From today’s perspective, however, these are worth less with rising interest rates.
The shares of the carmaker Tesla, for example, lost almost five percent and those of NVIDIA lost a good four percent. With a price gain of currently 46 percent since the beginning of the year, the papers of the chip group 2023 have also been exceptionally strong so far. The topic of artificial intelligence inspired.
PayPal’s shares gained almost three percent. The online payment service grew significantly towards the end of the year despite fears of inflation and recession. The announcement of CEO Dan Schulman’s resignation did not weigh on the share price.
The shares of the ride broker Lyft collapsed after quarterly figures and a disappointing outlook by 36 percent. In the United States, ride-sharing has almost completely recovered from the pandemic, but Lyft has not, wrote JPMorgan analyst Douglas Anmuth. The final quarter of Lyft was simply “forgetting”, the expert Brad Erickson from the Canadian bank RBC drew a sobering conclusion.
At the S&P end, News Corp (News B) was down nearly 9 percent. The group owned by the media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch wants to cut 1,250 jobs this year. CEO Robert Thomson blamed acute inflation and rising interest rates for News Corp’s recent quarter revenue down 7 percent from the year-ago quarter