Bank of America and Morgan Stanley advanced on the New York stock exchanges on Wednesday. The two major banks delivered better-than-expected results. The mood on Wall Street improved after the quarterly figures after the main indicators had suffered significant losses a day earlier due to rising interest rates.
Higher interest rates are generally unfavourable for equity investments. This is because interest rates are rising to expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to curb high inflation.
Shortly after opening, the Dow-Jones index was 0.5 percent higher at 35,540 points. The broad S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent to 4,605 points, and tech Nasdaq rose 0.8 percent to 14,615 points. The tech gauge lost 2.6 percent on Tuesday.
Bank of America won nearly 4 percent. The bank again extended loans to consumers and businesses in the fourth quarter. Investors see this as a signal that confidence in the economic recovery remains strong. Competitor Morgan Stanley rose more than 4 percent on strong earnings from stock trading. The bank earned less with bonds.
Procter & Gamble (plus 3 percent) also came up with figures. The competitor of food group Unilever recorded more turnover and profit than expected last quarter and raised the turnover forecast for the entire broken financial year. UnitedHealth Group gained 1.4 percent thanks to better-than-expected results from the large insurer and healthcare company.
AT&T and Verizon were around 0.3 percent lower. The large American telecom companies will not switch on their 5G masts around airports for the time being to prevent disruptions to air traffic. The high-speed mobile connections use frequencies close to those of some aircraft equipment, which could potentially lead to dangerous situations. Altimeters, in particular, could get upset, which could pose a danger when landing.
Sony, which is also listed in New York and Tokyo, continued the decline with a loss of 3.2 percent. The Japanese manufacturer of the game console PlayStation lost more than 7 percent a day earlier after the news that competitor Microsoft (plus 2.1 percent) is buying games developer Activision Blizzard (plus 0.5 percent) for $69 billion.
