Nervousness is rising on Wall Street

The day before the eagerly awaited decision on US monetary policy, nervousness rises on Wall Street. The Dow Jones standard value index fell 0.3 percent to 35,544 points on Tuesday. The broad S&P 500 (4634 points) and Nasdaq Composite (15,237 points) fell 0.7 and 1.1 percent, respectively. The Fed is expected to announce an accelerated throttling of its security purchases on Wednesday, said analyst Lukman Otunuga of the online broker FXTM. This stirs up speculation about premature rate hikes. "Investors see the probability of at least one rate hike by early May at 73 percent." Such a step by mid-June at the latest is considered agreed. The unexpectedly sharp rise in US producer prices encouraged stockbrokers in their expectation of a tightened monetary policy by the Fed. The path of least resistance will lead to a more aggressive tightening of US monetary policy in 2022, forecast investment strategist Michael Hewson from brokerage firm CMC Markets. Against this background, investors mainly sold technology stocks. The shares of Amazon, Apple, Netflix, the Facebook operator Meta and the Google parent Alphabet fell by up to 1.3 percent. According to experts, higher interest rates devalue future profits of these high-growth companies. When it comes to cryptocurrencies, Elon Musk once again caused a stir. The announcement by the Tesla boss that his company will in future accept Dogecoin to pay for merchandising products helped the cryptocurrency, which started as a parody of Bitcoin, to gain almost 19 percent to 0.19 dollars. The decision is fueling speculation that Tesla will again accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for its electric vehicles in the future, said analyst Timo Emden from Emden Research. On the other hand, the oil price went down again. The US variety WTI fell by just under 1.1 percent to $ 70.48 per barrel (159 liters). Investors worried about a possible decline in demand because of the newly discovered Omikron variant of the corona virus, said stockbrokers. In addition, in the coming year the supply will exceed the demand because of the expanded OPEC production and the release of strategic reserves of several countries, predicted Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch. In terms of stocks, Weibo was one of the biggest losers. China's Twitter rival stocks, listed on Wall Street, fell 3.5 percent after the Beijing government fined the company for violating cybersecurity law. Because investors feared further pressure on companies with stock exchange listings in the USA, papers from the electric car manufacturer Nio and the search engine operator Baidu lost up to three percent. The shares of MGM Resorts, however, rose 2.2 percent. The casino operator is selling the Hotel Mirage in Las Vegas, where the magicians Siegfried & Roy had performed for decades, for $ 1.08 billion to Hard Rock International, the operator of the Hard Rock Cafes. Terminix's paper made a record jump of around 18 percent to $ 44.15. British rival Rentokil plans to take over the exterminator for $ 55 per share, or a total of $ 6.7 billion. According to his first calculations, the merger will increase net profit by 20 percent, commented analyst Kean Marden of the Jefferies investment bank. However, it will take several years for the acquisition to pay off.