Wall Street stocks regained pre--crisis levels over the past week after the Federal Reserve promised a new massive stimulus plan.
“A week of danger turned into a week of hope,” Natixis analyst Evariste Lefeuvre said.
The Fed’s decision to inject an additional US$600 billion into the financial system by the middle of next year in a bid to boost the economic recovery — so called quantitative easing (QE) — has steadily pushed stocks up in recent weeks.
Wednesday’s announcement at the end of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting gave stocks an extra push to help them reach levels last seen before the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which sent share prices spiraling downward.
In the coming week, traders will react to a new string of earning reports from companies including General Motors, Cisco, Walmart and Dell.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.93 percent to 11,444.08 points. The broader S&P 500 index rose 3.06 percent to 1,225.85 points, while the technology-rich NASDAQ composite gained 2.85 percent to 2,578.98 points.
“For the next six months there will be a tug-of-war from the sentiment standpoint between better economic news and the prospect of less QE, or worse economic new and more QE,” Miller Tabak chief economic strategist Dan Greenhaus said. “The big question is whether it filters through to the economy.”
The easing measures, which drove the US dollar into a tailspin in recent weeks, making US products cheaper to purchase abroad, renewed fears of a global trade war as countries seek to protect their exports.
China, which Washington accuses of keeping its currency artificially low, led an international chorus of criticism over US quantitative easing.
The rhetoric looks likely to rise ahead of the summit of leaders of the 20 biggest economies in South Korea next week.
A surprise rise in job creations last month reported on Friday further boosted confidence the economy was improving, even though the stock indices reacted mutely to the data following a stellar rally on Thursday.
The US Labor Department reported that 151,000 new jobs were created in the US last month, much better than expected, while the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent for the third consecutive month.
“The jobs numbers were good today, there is a little sign of hope there,” Barber Financial Group president Dean Barber said.
With little surprise, Tuesday’s congressional and local elections gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, while US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party clung to a narrow majority in the Senate.
Many believe a gridlock in Congress would favor US firms and stocks as it could limit the passage of new controversial laws and reduce uncertainty.
However, Washington will have to tackle in the coming months several key issues that are bound to have a heavy impact on the economy, led by the thorny debate over the renewal of tax cuts introduced under former US president George W. Bush.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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