The battle over the state budget – which has led to the longest government shutdown in US history – is expected to be resolved by a vote in the House of Representatives early Thursday morning Swedish time.
Before that, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index had closed down 0.3 percent, while the broad-based S&P 500 Index rose 0.1 percent. The Dow climbed 0.7 percent and closed at a new record high, above 48,000 points for the first time.
Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer at asset manager UBS Global Wealth Management, tells the Bloomberg news agency that the market hopes that official statistics will now be released that will make it possible to assess which direction the Federal Reserve (Fed) will take regarding the key interest rate.
Statistics are not released
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday evening that October labor market and consumer price index statistics will likely never be released.
In terms of individual stocks, semiconductor giant AMD pulled strongly up, up 9 percent. In the opposite direction in the AI sector, software company Palantir moved down 3.6 percent.
Electric car manufacturer Polestar, in which Volvo Cars is a co-owner, plunged 15.4 percent after a quarterly report that displeased investors.
Airlines rose
Even five of the seven very index-heavy technology companies known as "the magnificent seven" – all on the list of the world's ten most valuable listed companies – had a tough day and fell more or less significantly.
Only software company Microsoft and semiconductor giant Nvidia managed to crawl above zero with increases of 0.5 and 0.3 percent, respectively.
United Airlines rose 5.3 percent. Activity in the industry will increase as the lockdown is lifted and record demand for air travel is expected during the Thanksgiving weekend celebrations at the end of November.
