Undecided after data and before job report By dpa-AFX

NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – The US stock exchanges (ETR:) closed on Thursday after nervous trading without a clear trend. In the course of the day, the technology indices, which had recently been badly hit, changed direction several times; ultimately they gained slightly. The standard values, on the other hand, fell. Before the eagerly awaited monthly labor market report on Friday, economic data was mixed. They do not provide investors with any guidance.

The leading industrial index fell by 0.54 percent to 40,755.75 points. The stock market barometer had only reached a record high on Friday. The market breadth fell by 0.30 percent to 5,503.41 points. The technology-heavy value was down 0.05 percent to 18,930.33 points.

Investors viewed it positively that the mood among service providers had surprisingly brightened somewhat in August. In addition, the number of initial applications for unemployment benefits had fallen more sharply than expected last week. However, the private sector had created fewer new jobs in August than at any time since the beginning of 2021. According to the report by the private labor market service provider ADP, the increase in employment was also noticeably weaker than expected.

In this respect, the labor market data for August due on Friday are important for assessing the economic situation and monetary policy. The market expects that the US Federal Reserve could reduce key interest rates by around one percentage point in total by the end of the year. With three interest rate meetings still to come, this would mean that a large interest rate hike of 0.5 points is also conceivable.

If the USA does not slide into a downturn, significant interest rate cuts would be good news for the often highly valued technology stocks. Investors are again buying some of the particularly heavily weighted stocks. The shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ:), Apple (NASDAQ:), Meta (NASDAQ:), Nvidia (NASDAQ:), Amazon (NASDAQ:) and Tesla (NASDAQ:) rose between 0.5 and 4.9 percent.

Tesla also mentioned a message from a subsidiary of the electric car manufacturer on the news platform X. According to the message, the company is considering introducing a solution in China and Europe in the first quarter of 2025 that will bring the full potential of autonomous driving. However, the idea is still subject to regulatory approval.

Meanwhile, HP Enterprise (NYSE:) showed rather disappointing profitability, as the bank UBS (SIX:) mentioned. The IT group’s share price fell by almost six percent. Since half of it is not the case that orders received in the area of ​​artificial intelligence were solid.

However, a much bigger disappointment was identified at C3.AI, where the share price fell by more than twelve percent. The software provider, which specializes in AI solutions for companies, reported surprisingly weak subscription revenues for the first quarter.

The euro was supported by the economic data and was trading at 1.1107 US dollars after the New York stock exchange closed. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate at 1.1097 (Wednesday: 1.1050) dollars. The dollar thus cost 0.9011 (0.9049) euros.

On the US bond market, the futures contract for ten-year government bonds () reacted to the data with gains and rose by 0.16 percent to 114.75 points. The yield, in turn, is at 3.73 percent.