- The Nasdaq rose 0.6% on Thursday to close the session at 15,125.
- IBM tanked 9.5% after disappointing investors with Q3 results.
- BioNTech surged 6% on phase 3 study results of COVID-19 booster shot.
The US markets closed mostly higher on Thursday aided by strong gains for consumer discretionary and technology shares, in addition to strong corporate earnings results continuing to be released in the US.
The Dow Jones fell 0.018% to finish the trading day down 6 points to close at 35,603 points .
The tech heavy NASDAQ rose 0.6% to finish the trading day up 94 points to close at 15,216 points with Netflix and Tesla gaining 4.48% and 3.26% respectively.
One bitcoin is worth US$62,480 going into the Asian trading day. The world?s largest cryptocurrency recovered from an earlier 87% crash in the space of a minute, sending the price of Bitcoin from US$65,815 to US$8,200 due to a bug in the trading algorithm of an institutional investor.
The Australian dollar is firm against the major currencies and is buying 74.64 US cents.
International tech giant IBM tanked more than 9% on Thursday after releasing third-quarter results that disappointed investors. For the period, IBM reported just a 0.3% growth in revenue YoY to US$17.6bn, falling short of analysts estimates of US$17.8bn, and sales of US$5.7bn, a slight increase of 2.5% but also falling short of analysts estimates of US$5.8bn. IBM also reported an adjusted EPS decline of 2% to US$2.52/share.
Shares in German biotech company BioNTech surged 6.29% yesterday after the company announced results from a phase 3 study evaluating the efficacy rate of its COVID-19 vaccine booster shot partnered with Pfizer. The results showed the Pfizer and BioNTech booster shot had an efficacy of 95.6% for a 30 microgram booster dose of the vaccine in a late stage study.
And Spotify has expanded the launch of its video podcast feature by allowing more users to upload video podcasts to the platform in a bid to enhance engagement and increase its competitive edge in the video space.