If not quite as bombastic as promised at lunchtime, the Dow Jones nevertheless made strides after the bell.
Climbing 370 points, the Dow is trading the right side of 27000 for the first time in exactly 5-weeks. That’s an impressive turnaround from the sub-25000 lows briefly seen at the end of June, and leaves the index around 700 points shy of the highs seen at the start of last month (boy the markets have been on a rollercoaster recently).
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) took the JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) role this Wednesday – i.e. a finance firm with a mood-lifting, better than forecast set of Q2 figures. The company’s profit came in at a staggering $6.26 per share, not far off double the $3.78 that had been estimated by analysts. Revenue, meanwhile, was $3.5 billion higher than expected at $13.3 billion, Goldman like JP Morgan benefiting from a volatility-led surge in its trading division. That department was so strong, in fact, that it alone outperformed forecasts by $2.5 billion.
There were also signs of recovery across the USA’s Wednesday data. Industrial production hit 5.4%, against the 4.5% forecast and 1.4% seen last month. The capacity utilization rate was up to 68.6%, with import prices climbing 1.4%.
Feeling gleeful after a double-dose of vaccine news from Moderna and, according to Robert Peston, Oxford, Europe’s optimism only grew as the session went on.
The FTSE claimed its own 5-week peak of 6320 following a 2.5% increase, while the DAX was up the same amount, nearing 13000 for the first time since the end of February. The day’s winner, however, was the CAC, which encroached on 5150 thanks to a 3% surge.
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