The upward movement on Wall Street has continued

The upward movement in small increments on Wall Street has continued. "Everywhere you look is liquidity and investors are looking for opportunities to invest," commented Mike Mullaney of Boston Partners. In line with this, UBS increased the year-end target for the S&P 500 to 5,000 points, justifying this with the better-than-expected quarterly reporting season, the loose monetary policy and the spending programs of the US government. The Dow Jones index rose 0.1 percent to 35,405 points. The other major indices rose similarly, but still marked new record highs over the course of the year. For the S&P 500 it was the fifth plus in a row and the 51st record high in the current year. Before the US Federal Reserve President Jerome Powell's speech at the central bank meeting in Jackson Hole on Friday, some market participants are likely to have held back a little. The majority do not yet expect Powell to be more specific about when the tapering of securities purchases and thus a tighter monetary policy could begin. On the economic side, incoming orders for durable goods did not send a clear signal for July. They did fall, but only minimally and less than estimated by economists. Yields on the US bond market rose again significantly. The ten-year return increased by 5 ticks to 1.35 percent. After the strong impact of the past two days, oil prices continued to rise by up to 1.6 percent. The heavy losses from the previous week have already been more than made up for. The latest US inventory data had shown further declines for both oil and gasoline. The dollar did not benefit from rising market interest rates and tended to suffer slightly from the expectation that no concrete taper statements are likely to be made in Jackson Hole yet. Rising market interest rates had a particularly positive effect on bank stocks because they enable financial institutions to do more profitable business. The S&P 500 bank index was the day's winner with an increase of 1.8 percent. In the Dow, American Express, JP Morgan, Traverlers and Goldman Sachs were at the top with gains of up to 3.1 percent. Merger fantasy drove the course of the memory chip manufacturer Western Digital by 7.8 percent upwards. The background to this was a report in the Wall Street Journal, according to which the company is said to be in "advanced" talks about a merger with the Japanese Kioxia Holdings. Shares of other memory chip manufacturers such as Micron Technology (+ 2.9%) or Seagate (+ 1.0%) also rose.