Wall Street's quarterly reporting season moves into top gear next week with investors hoping that robust earnings will offset mounting fears over the outlook for US interest rates.
In this past holiday-shortened week, the major stock indexes were flat or lower as US economic data, rising bond yields and surging oil prices reignited concerns about what the US Federal Reserve intends to do with borrowing costs.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average crept up 0.16 percent from a week earlier to 11,137.65. But the tech-rich NASDAQ lost 0.55 percent to 2,326.11.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index slipped 0.49 percent over the week to close at 1,289.12 on Thursday.
US markets were closed on Friday for the Easter break.
"There is a general concern on inflation, that's always bad for stocks. That is offsetting the positive outlook on the earnings front, at least for now," Owen Fitzpatrick of Deutsche Bank Private Banking said.
Brent crude futures smashed through US$70 a barrel on Thursday to cap an alarming week on the oil markets, whose panic over Iran's nuclear ambitions fed to an extent through to Wall Street.
But the overriding concern for stock investors was what the oil price surge might do to Fed thinking about US inflation.
On the bond market, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose from 4.96 percent a week earlier to 5.036 percent Thursday, the first time it has surpassed 5 percent since June 2002.
The rise in yields came on news that US retail sales had recovered 0.6 percent last month thanks to unexpected strength in automobile and building materials sales. That only served to stoke inflation fears.
Markets are betting strongly that the Federal Reserve will hike US interest rates again when it next meets next month. But expectations are now rising that the US central bank will increase rates even further in June and beyond.
But not everyone is convinced that Wall Street can therefore anticipate a clear run up.
"In the last month the market moved up despite rising interest rates and despite higher oil prices, focusing instead on the upcoming earnings season," Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Marc Pado said.
"Next week is the bulk of the earnings. So I think what we're going to see is that we bought the rumor of good earnings, we're going to sell on the news when the news goes out," he said.
"And the forward-looking statements that companies are likely to give will probably be restrained given all the negatives that companies see: rising interest rates, rising mortgages, a lot of concern," Pado said.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day