McDonald's Corp and Safeway Inc said earnings will miss forecasts and Walt Disney Co reported lower profit at its media unit, causing markets to decline for a second day.
"It's hard to see a major advance from here given the level of earnings," said Robert Torray, who manages US$1.5 billion in the Torray Institutional Fund and the Torray Fund in Bethesda, Maryland.
Stocks were also hurt after the United Nations passed a resolution demanding unrestricted arms inspections in Iraq. The decision makes a US-led attack more likely if Saddam Hussein refuses to comply.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 7.91, or 0.9 percent, to 894.74. General Electric Co and Tenet Healthcare Corp led the decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 49.11, or 0.6 percent, to 8,537.13, with McDonald's contributing one-fifth of the slide.
The NASDAQ Composite Index shed 17.43, or 1.3 percent, to 1,359.28. Nvidia Corp fueled the decline by tumbling 22 percent after saying it expects little sales growth.
Today's losses helped the S&P 500 and NASDAQ turn lower for the week, following four straight weekly gains. The S&P 500 dropped 0.7 percent this week and the NASDAQ 0.1 percent. The Dow rose 0.2 percent, its fifth-straight weekly advance.
"Iraq will weigh on the market until we have some sort of indicator of how it will play out," said Kathy Cole Dodd, who helps oversee US$140 billion at Banc One Investment Advisors in Columbus, Ohio.
"The market had so many other things to think about this week, the pressures from Iraq weren't at the forefront, and today brought them back."
Iraqi President Hussein is unlikely to adhere to the demand for unfettered inspections, increasing the chances that the US and UK will attack the country, British officials said Friday.
Almost three stocks fell for every two that rose on the New York Stock Exchange while five declined for every four that advanced on the NASDAQ Stock Market. Some 1.45 billion shares traded on the Big Board, 0.8 percent below the three-month daily average.
McDonald's slumped US$1.52 to US$17.79 after saying it won't meet 2002 earnings estimates because of costs to close 175 stores in 10 countries and falling sales in the US and Europe. McDonald's also will exit three Middle Eastern and Latin American countries and eliminate as many as 600 jobs, including up to 250 in the US.
Safeway shed US$2.60, or 12 percent, to US$20. The No. 3 US supermarket company said profit will be less than forecast this quarter and for several years as it lowers prices to keep customers.
Disney, the second-largest US media company, dropped US$0.58 to US$17.68. Profit at its media-networks unit, which includes ABC television, fell 58 percent because of lower advertising and higher programming costs.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the