Electric car maker Tesla traded in value on Wall Street on Thursday. US investors are not yet reassured by the company’s agreements for the important Chinese market.
Tesla and major Chinese carmakers have officially pledged to compete fairly with each other to avoid “abnormal prices”. That may mean an end to the price war that has been going on for months. Tesla caused a price war at the end of last year by slashing the prices of its models to boost demand.
Tesla fell more than 2 percent in opening trading in New York. The general mood on the stock markets was gloomy. The Dow Jones index was down 1 percent shortly after trading began at 33,955 points, and the broad S&P 500 also fell 1 percent to 4,402 points. The Nasdaq lost 1.3 percent at 13,618 points.
Investors were still chewing on the Federal Reserve meeting minutes. It showed that not all central bank policymakers agreed to hold interest rates in June. They also indicated that interest rates will be raised further in the coming period in the fight against inflation. All attention now turns to the official US government jobs report that will be released on Friday. In addition to inflation, job growth and employment play an important role in the Fed’s rate decision.
Attention was also paid to news from China. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has arrived in Beijing for a multi-day visit to improve the chilled relationship between the two superpowers. Yellen’s visit comes just weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China.
Meta Platforms (plus 0.3 percent) rose again after Wednesday’s plus of almost 3 percent. Investors are pleased with the news that the new Threads app, with which Facebook’s parent company wants to compete with Twitter, has already attracted millions of registrations in the first hours after its launch.
JetBlue Airways fell nearly 4 percent. The airline announced that it would end its partnership with American Airlines (minus 2 percent) northwest of the US to focus on the billion-dollar acquisition of Spirit Airlines (plus 1.1 percent).