Brilliant business figures at the Facebook group Meta and the US Federal Reserve's slowed rate of interest rate hikes are causing a rush for tech stocks on Wall Street. The Dow Jones suffered from the euphoria.
Good figures and a convincing outlook from the Facebook parent company Meta have again accelerated the recovery rally in tech stocks in the USA. While meta stocks surged more than a quarter at their peak, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 at times extended gains to more than four percent. It thus continued the significant price gains from the previous day as a result of the US interest rate decision. Before the results that were expected from the industry giants Amazon, Alphabet and Apple after the market closed, investors did not give up too much over the course of the year. In the end, the Nasdaq 100 index reached 12,803.14 points, an impressive plus of 3.56 percent. For the first time since August, the technology-heavy barometer made it back above the 12,800 point mark.
Investor interest in standard values suffered from the tech euphoria: the leading index Dow Jones Industrial even fell slightly by 0.11 percent to 34,053.94 points. The broad S
The Fed had again slowed its pace of interest rate hikes in the middle of the week. However, the statements made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell were decisive. Although he held out the prospect of further interest rate hikes to curb high inflation, he also gave the impression that the tightening of monetary policy was likely to be completed soon. On the Nasdaq stock exchange, however, the positively received signals from Meta were now considered the decisive price driver. The Facebook parent company performed better than expected in the past quarter, despite another decline in sales. In addition, Facebook founder and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg promised further cost reductions.
While Meta jumped 23 percent, Align Technology's shares on the Nasdaq 100 even dwarfed this with a plus of more than 27 percent. The manufacturer of splints for correcting misaligned teeth also exceeded expectations.
Microsoft from the tech sector was at the top of the Dow with a price increase of 4.7 percent. However, the strength of the tech stocks contained there was not enough to support the leading index, because on the other hand there was the weight of falling stocks, for example from the healthcare sector. A disappointing business outlook for the pharmaceutical company Merck
Before the quarterly reports expected after the market close, which should help decide whether the sector rally can continue, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet were also among the big gainers in the tech industry. The stocks of the three giants rose between 3.7 and 7.4 percent. Away from tech stocks, shares in postal competitor Fedex rose 6.1 percent.
The focus was also on interest rate decisions in Europe, where hopes of an early end to the cycle of interest rate hikes are also increasing. The euro was put under pressure with the last payment of 1.0911 US dollars. The ECB had set the reference rate even higher at 1.0988 (Wednesday: 1.0894) dollars.
