NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Investors on the US stock exchanges entered an eventful week more courageously. After a so-far gloomy second half of October, the Dow Jones Industrial (Dow Jones 30 Industrial) recovered vigorously on Monday from its lowest level since the end of March, to which it sank last Friday. It crossed the finish line 1.58 percent higher at 32,928.96 points, reducing the previous minus in October to around 1.7 percent.
The market-wide S&P 500 gained 1.20 percent to 4166.82 points on Monday. The NASDAQ 100, which is predominantly made up of technology stocks, rose by 1.09 percent to 14,335.51 points.
Investors appeared to welcome the fact that Israel’s military advance in Gaza was more limited than expected, commented Pierre Veyret, technical analyst at broker Activtrades. However, given the tense geopolitical situation, the mood could quickly change again, especially as an eventful week lies ahead with important economic data and the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision on Wednesday.
Market expert Konstantin Oldenburger from broker CMC Markets fears another volatile week with many twists and turns. In addition to the Fed, he described Apple’s quarterly figures on Thursday and the US labor market report on Friday as potentially responsible for this. From his point of view, there could be hope that the last days of October and the beginning of November are one of the strongest periods of the year.
Among the Dow stocks, McDonald’s (McDonalds) satisfied its investors with its quarterly figures: its shares closed roughly in line with the market, up 1.7 percent. The quick-service restaurant chain has once again presented strong results, said analyst Danilo Gargiulo from Bernstein Research. Thanks to the sales and margin development, earnings per share were higher than expected.
In the chip sector, however, the reporting season caused deep disappointment: after the US company ON Semiconductor missed expectations with its quarterly outlook, its shares collapsed by almost 22 percent. They also dragged down other industry stocks: NXP (NXP Semiconductors) lost 5.0 percent and Texas Instruments 1.8 percent.
The shares of many large tech giants such as Alphabet (Alphabet A (ex Google)), Meta (Meta Platforms (ex Facebook)), Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix were on the Nasdaq stock exchange with price increases of between 1.9 and 3.9 percent but a counterweight to the weak chip sector. Apple was also among the winners a few days before the expected quarterly figures with a share price increase of 1.2 percent.
Tesla investors had to endure heavy price losses: the price fell by 4.8 percent, and for the first time in a good five months the shares were available for less than $200. The topic here was the Chinese competitor BYD, which is hot on Tesla’s trail as the world’s largest seller of purely electric vehicles. The company announced record third-quarter profit on Monday.
The shares of Western Digital were also noticeable with a price jump of 7.3 percent. They showed a counter-reaction after the dwindling hope of a merger with the Kioxia Group had recently left its mark on the share price. The memory manufacturer reported a quarterly loss that was less than expected. The course was also supported by a planned split into two separate companies for hard disk and flash storage.
The euro was last quoted at $1.0616 in US trading. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.0605 (Friday: 1.0541) dollars. The dollar therefore cost 0.9429 euros.
US government bond prices fell. The futures contract for ten-year bonds (T-Note Future) fell by 0.21 percent to 106.20 points. In return, the yield on ten-year government securities rose to 4.89 percent./ck/he/tih/he