Tech stocks under pressure: Rising oil prices are depressing sentiment on Wall Street

Brent and WTI are each increasing in price by around five percent. Investors are already nervous about the coming reporting season. Chip stocks such as Nvidia and Intel in particular are declining. Samsung Electronics provides strong quarterly figures.

An increase in the price of oil caused prices on the US stock exchanges to fall again on Thursday. The Dow Jones index of standard stocks was 0.3 percent lower at 51,052.75 points. The broader S&P 500 lost 0.3 percent to 7,778.64 points. The Nasdaq technology exchange index fell by 0.9 percent to 27,289.40.

Ongoing supply fears due to the Iran war, but also a hurricane that is heading towards offshore production areas in the USA, drove oil prices up. Oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico had collectively shut down about a quarter of their current oil production and about 16 percent of their current natural gas production as of Wednesday, according to the Marine Minerals Administration. North Sea oil Brent and US oil WTI each rose in price by around five percent to $105.69 and $92.65 per barrel (159 liters). “We are struggling with double headwinds from energy prices and government bond yields. In addition, the news situation regarding economic data is thin,” said Art Hogan, chief strategist at asset manager B. Riley. "There's a kind of wait-and-see attitude ahead of the reporting season, which doesn't really start until next week."

The high energy prices increased speculation that interest rates from the major central banks would continue to rise in order to get inflation pressure under control. The situation on the bond markets therefore remained tense. The interest rate on the ten-year US bond was 5.2720 percent, only slightly below the 24-year high of 5.3645 percent reached the day before.

This particularly impacted technology stocks, as higher interest rates from the US Federal Reserve made investments by high-growth companies more expensive. Shares of companies such as Intel, Nvidia and Broadcom lost between 1.3 and 3.5 percent. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Broadcom is also planning to raise $50 billion in financing for the AI ​​developer OpenAI. That fueled fears that massive debt issuance by tech companies could intensify competition for capital.

Even Samsung Electronics' strong quarterly figures couldn't brighten the mood. “Instead, investors used the good news to take profits,” said Andreas Lipkow, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. The world's largest memory chip manufacturer in terms of sales promised an almost ninefold increase in profits in the third quarter. Samsung shares fell 2.4 percent. The titles of US rival Micron lost 1.7 percent. “If even convincing company figures no longer ensure rising prices, that is a warning signal for the entire stock rally,” summarized Lipkow.