US stock exchange
Wall Street is expanding plus – Tesla is strong, according to Musk
Elon Musk put a vote on Twitter whether he should sell shares in his company. Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa-Zentralbild / ZB
© dpa-infocom GmbH
While Pfizer shares reacted positively to an emergency approval from the US FDA for the corona drug Paxlovid, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is selling his company’s papers.
The US stock exchanges expanded their strong gains from the previous day on Wednesday. Both the standard value indices and the technology indices closed just below their daily highs.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial rose 0.74 percent to 35,753.89 points. Shortly before the Christmas weekend, however, many market participants are likely to have closed their books. In the shortened trading week, the Dow has gained 1.1 percent so far.
For the market-wide S&P 500, it rose by 1.02 percent to 4696.56 points in the middle of the week. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 gained 1.21 percent to 16,180.14 points. Both indices also benefited from the high price gains in Tesla shares, which, according to CEO Elon Musk, jumped seven and a half percent back over the $ 1,000 mark.
Tesla boss sells stocks
Musk again sold its own shares in the electric car manufacturer, as emerged from a mandatory notification to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. At the beginning of November, he had a vote on Twitter whether he should part with a tenth of his Tesla stake in order to pay more taxes. The majority of Twitter users were in favor. Around 3.5 million shares are missing to fully meet the commitment.
However, Musk told the satire website Babylon Bee on Wednesday that he had now achieved the goal of selling more than ten percent of his Tesla shares. This could be a reason for the strong price increase. The selling pressure should now ease and investors could focus more on fundamentals again, said an analyst.
Pharmaceutical stocks
Pfizer shares reacted to an emergency approval from the US FDA for the corona drug Paxlovid with a plus of a good one percent. The aim is to treat patients aged twelve and over who have tested positive with mild to moderate symptoms and a high risk of the disease getting worse. According to the FDA, it is the first Covid drug in the US to be taken in pill form.
The Pfizer drug and another pill from Merck & Co against Covid are therefore seen as important means of relieving hospitals. Experts expect the Merck pill to be approved soon. The Merck shares gained 0.8 percent.
Caterpillar benefited at the top of the Dow with plus 1.9 percent from a positive analyst comment. Bernstein Research had upgraded the construction machinery manufacturer’s paper to “Outperform” and raised the price target from $ 200 to $ 240. At the back of the Dow were the titles of the sporting goods manufacturer Nike with minus 0.7 percent, which paid a little tribute to their previous day’s growth of more than six percent.
After the market closed in New York, the euro was priced at $ 1.1335. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.1301 (Tuesday: 1.1295) dollars, the dollar cost 0.8849 (0.8854) euros.