The US stock market took a hit over the week to Friday, despite the Dow blue-chip index smashing the 14,000-point barrier for the first time ever, amid renewed fears about the US mortgage and housing market.
Market participants said Google and Microsoft's latest quarterly earnings reports had also weighed on the market as Google's profit, at US$925 million, fell short of expectations and analysts fretted over Microsoft's future performance.
Several lackluster economic reports released during the week had also dented investors' optimism by week's end.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.40 percent for the week to end on Friday at 13,851.08. The broad-market Standard & Poor's 500, which also rocketed to a record high earlier in the week, lost a hefty 1.19 percent to 1,534.10.
The tech-dominated NASDAQ composite declined 0.72 percent on the week to finish at 2,687.60.
Despite the volatile swings of the past week, however, the indexes remain close to all time or multiyear highs, largely due to the recent wave of big mergers and acquisitions.
Some market participants said next week could be just as heady.
"It will be a very exciting week. We will have a real focus on the economy and inflation and we also want to hear how the rest of corporate America is doing on the earnings front, what kind of guidance we will start getting," said Art Hogan, an analyst at Jefferies & Co.
"So far, earnings have been good, with notable misses though as Google missing was a surprise for everybody," Hogan said, adding that concerns remain about the US housing market.
But stocks hit a roadblock on Friday as concerns re-emerged over the US housing market, and subprime loans granted to people with patchy credit records. Rising home foreclosures and late mortgage payments have sparked fears that the housing downturn could impact consumer spending, a key economic driver.
Investors' nerves were also shaken a little further Thursday after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he expected "significant financial losses" to occur from failed subprime real-estate loans.
Next week will also see the continuation of the second quarter earnings season with results due from automaker Ford, drug group Merck, telecoms giant AT&T, online retailer Amazon, aviation group Boeing and oil giant ExxonMobil among others.
Bond prices firmed as investors looked for safe havens. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond dropped to 4.956 percent from 5.107 percent a week earlier. The 30-year bond yield fell to 5.064 percent from 5.194 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
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],”
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
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