The Dow continued with a new record, the S&P 500 with small losses

The industrial Dow Jones set its second record for 2022 in the same number of sessions today, drawing impetus from the banks, while the wider S&P 500 did not manage to follow despite the upward start that led it to new historical highs.

The banking sector played a leading role in the rise today as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates from their historic lows this year to tackle inflation, which is expected to boost banks’ profitability. The S&P 500 banks index jumped 3.5% today.

Minneapolis Fed Chairman Neel Kashkari, citing rising inflation, said today that the US Federal Reserve would need to raise interest rates twice this year to tackle inflation. The Fed official previously estimated that US interest rates could remain at historic lows until at least 2024.

Meanwhile, investors continue to watch the bad epidemiological picture in the hope that the world’s largest economies will not have to go into lockdowns again. Experts ‘initial estimates that the new micron mutation is milder than the delta fuel investors’ optimism that the restrictive measures imposed by governments will not be as severe as they once were, when they led the world economy into recession.

Infections, however, are setting one record after another, causing concern among experts. The United States recorded a total of 1,083,948 cases on Monday, a new record since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. This is more than double the previous record of 486,428 set just four days ago.

Indicators – Statistics

On the board, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 214.59 points or 0.59% and closed at 36,799.65 points, while the broader S&P 500 fell by just 3.02 points or -0.06% to 4,793.54 points. The technology Nasdaq lost 210.08 points or -1.33% to 15,622.72 points.

Of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, 20 closed with a positive sign and ten with a negative. The biggest gains were made by Caterpillar with gains of $ 11.08 or 5.35% at $ 218.08, followed by JPMorgan Chase at $ 167.83 with gains of 3.79% and American Express at $ 173.59 with an increase of 3.20%.

The three stocks with the biggest losses were Salesforce (-2.83%), Cisco Systems (-2.45%) and UnitedHealth Group (-2.27%).

In business developments, Ford Motor shares jumped 11.7% after the automaker announced plans to nearly double production of its F-150 Lightning electric truck at its Michigan plant to 150,000 vehicles a year to cover ” huge increase in demand “.

Apple fell 1.3% after yesterday’s jump that led it intra-conference above the level of $ 3 trillion. in stock value, a level that however failed to hold until closing.

At the end of the day, manufacturing activity slowed significantly in December, according to data released today, while prices paid by companies recorded a significant decline after the jump in previous months in a sign that inflationary pressures may ease.

In particular, the index for manufacturing activity at the national level fell to 58.7 points last month from 61.1 in November, according to data released today by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). This is the lowest measurement since January 2021. It is noted that the average estimates of analysts in a Reuters poll put the index at 60.1 points.

The measurement for the prices paid by the manufacturing companies dropped to 68.2 points last month, at the lowest level since November 2020, from 82.4 in November. The drop is the biggest since March 2020, when businesses were forced to close to slow the first wave of infections.