At the US Federal Reserve's most recent rate meeting, "almost all" committee members voted for a small rate hike. On Wall Street, the news does not bring relief to investors.
The publication of the minutes of the US Federal Reserve's most recent meeting ultimately brought little relief to the US stock exchanges. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 closed up 0.05 percent to 12,066.27 points. The leading index Dow Jones Industrial lost 0.26 percent to 33,045.09 points. The broad S ended with minus 0.16 percent to 3991.05 points
At the most recent interest rate meeting of the US Federal Reserve, the small interest rate step was met with great approval. "Almost all" members of the Monetary Policy Committee were in favor of an increase of 0.25 percentage points, according to the Minutes of the latest interest rate decision of February 1st. Few representatives would have supported or imagined an increase of 0.50 percentage points. There was no talk of an interest rate break.
The Fed has been relatively "dovish," wrote the economists at Capital Economics. Doves mean representatives of a more lax monetary policy. However, the Fed meeting took place before the announcement of the recently strong US economic data, the experts continue.
Analyst Konstantin Oldenburger from broker CMC had already pointed out this circumstance before the minutes were published. It should therefore not be overstated as economic data released after the session continued to indicate stubborn inflation. According to Oldenburger, the mood within the monetary policy committee may have changed in the meantime, and certainly not for the better.
Midweek tech stocks on the Nasdaq Palo Alto were positive, rising 12.5 percent. Stockbrokers spoke of “very strong” quarterly figures from the IT security company. JPMorgan analyst Brian Essex lauded the result in an environment of difficult economic conditions. The shares of the chip manufacturer Intel were among the losers. Affected by the fact that the quarterly dividend will be almost tripled, they fell 2.3 percent.
The ended talks between the media group News Corp and the real estate sector information service Costar about the subsidiary Move Inc, which operates a US real estate portal, made headlines. Both stocks suffered: News Corp lost 3.2 percent and Costar 5.1 percent. In the case of the latter, a disappointing outlook was added as a burden.
Following the Fed minutes, the euro fell to its lowest level since early January. After the US market closed, $1.0603 was paid for the common currency. The European Central Bank (ECB) had set the reference rate at 1.0644 (Tuesday: 1.0664) dollars, the dollar had cost 0.9395 (0.9377) euros. On the US bond market, the futures contract for ten-year government bonds (T-Note Future) gained 0.10 percent to 111.17 points. In return, the yield on ten-year government bonds fell to 3.925 percent.
