On Tuesday, Manchester United was one of the big winners on the New York stock exchanges. Investors welcomed a report from a Qatari newspaper that Sheikh Jassim’s bid for the English football club has the best chance of success.
The overall mood on Wall Street was determined by the inflation rate, which was released premarket. It showed that consumer prices in the United States rose 4 percent in May. Inflation thus cooled slightly more than expected. In April, inflation fell below 5 percent for the first time in two years.
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates ten times to fight inflation. Investors are hoping that the Fed, which started its two-day interest rate meeting on Tuesday, will temporarily halt its rate hikes now that inflation appears to be declining further. That would be excellent news for high-growth chip and tech companies sensitive to higher interest rates.
Shortly after the start of trading, the Dow Jones index was 0.3 percent higher at 34,182 points. The broad S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent to 4359 points, and tech exchange Nasdaq gained 0.6 percent to 13,546 points. The S&P and Nasdaq closed on Monday at their highest levels in thirteen months.
Oracle rose 4.7 percent. The American software group posted more revenue and profit last quarter than analysts and investors had expected. The sales forecast for the current quarter was also higher than expected.
Apple opened almost flat. Analysts from the Swiss bank UBS removed the iPhone maker from their buy list, which reached the highest price ever on Monday.
Games company Activision Blizzard won 1 percent and Xbox maker Microsoft 0.9 percent. The US regulator FTC wants to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. According to the FTC, the takeover will give Microsoft too much game market power.