Market report
As of: 01/13/2022 7:52 a.m.
Today the DAX is likely to start trading with losses, but will continue to hover around the 16,000 point mark. Investors are eagerly awaiting the start of the US earnings season.
Banks and brokers expect the DAX to start trading with slight discounts. Yesterday the DAX closed 0.4 percent stronger at 16,010.32 points. For the past few days, inflation worries had ruled the markets over fears of a rate hike.
US consumer prices rose as sharply in December as they did last in 1982. The plus of seven percent compared to the same period last year, however, remained within the range of estimates and did not surprise the financial markets negatively. Therefore, there was no stronger reaction.
US accounting season is coming
Statements by the US Federal Reserve Banker James Bullard, on the other hand, are likely to have a stronger impact on sentiment: He is in favor of a more courageous tightening of the Fed’s interest rate policy. “I now think that we should maybe take four steps in 2022,” said the head of the St. Louis central bank district to the Wall Street Journal. In November he said that two rate hikes were appropriate. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also announced this week that he would soon abandon the policy of cheap money.
The upcoming start of the US accounting season could provide impetus. The big banks Citigroup, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo present their quarterly figures on Friday, traditionally heralding the US accounting season. Investors could expect record results, forecast Neil Wilson, chief analyst of the online broker Markets.com.
Nikkei: Setback in Asia
In the United States, yesterday’s inflation data were unmoved: The Dow Jones closed 0.1 percent higher to 36,290 points. The technology-heavy Nasdaq advanced 0.2 percent to 15,188 points. The broad S&P 500 gained 0.3 percent to 4726 points.
In Asia, the indices fell in the morning. In Japan, the Nikkei closes one percent lower at 28,489 points. The broader Topix index also fell. One reason is the sudden increase in coronavirus infections there. The Shanghai stock exchange lost 0.3 percent. The index of the most important companies in Shanghai and Shenzen lost 0.6 percent.
Salzgitter wants to do without blast furnaces
The Salzgitter steel group does not want to operate a blast furnace until the mid-2030s. By then, production should be completely converted to a new process. “Then we reduced our CO2 emissions by 95 percent, so by almost 8 million tons every year,” said CEO Gunnar Groebler of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The group estimates investments in the range of three to four billion euros for the conversion of steel production. Groebler expects political support for this.
PC sales at ten-year high
The need for PCs in the corona pandemic is still not exhausted. Last year, according to calculations by market researchers, sales rose to the highest level in around a decade. The three major IT market researchers who presented their estimates came to largely the same trends, but partly to different numbers.
The analysis firms IDC and Canalys saw the market grow by almost 15 percent in 2021 and Gartner by 9.9 percent. Their calculations for the number of personal computers sold ranged from just under 340 million (Gartner) to around 349 million (IDC). The differences are due to the fact that the experts conduct their own research in sales channels and, in some cases, also take different device categories into account.
Moderna expects vaccination data for children aged two and over
The US manufacturer Moderna expects the results of its clinical study on the corona vaccine for children aged two to five years in March. If the data and discussions with the supervisory authority were positive, Moderna could then seek emergency approval for the vaccination, according to the company.
The other manufacturers of an mRNA vaccine, Biontech and Pfizer, had announced in mid-December that they expected to be able to apply for an emergency approval for the age groups from six months to five years “in the first half of 2022”. Many US experts expect an emergency approval for a vaccine for infants aged two and over in the course of the first half of the year.