European stocks climbed this week, recovering from a selloff, as earnings from Intel Corp and Apple Inc to PSA Peugeot Citroen and L’Oreal SA spurred investor optimism in the global economic recovery.
Infineon Technologies AG, Europe’s second-largest chipmaker rallied more than 3 percent. Peugeot and Fiat SpA led gains in carmakers, while L’Oreal, the world’s biggest cosmetics maker, climbed more than 2 percent in Paris.
The benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Index gained 1 percent in the holiday-shortened week, as 37 of the gauge’s companies reported earnings. The measure sank 1.7 percent on Monday, the largest drop in a month, after Standard & Poor’s cut its credit outlook for the US, the world’s largest economy.
“We continue to favor equities as our preferred asset class,” said Tristan Hanson, head of asset allocation at Jersey, Channel -Islands-based Ashburton Ltd, which oversees US$1.7 billion. “Behind the scenes, corporate profits and cash flows have continued to recover strongly from the crisis.”
National benchmark indexes climbed in 10 of the 18 Western European markets. Germany’s DAX index rose 1.6 percent, France’s CAC 40 Index climbed 1.2 percent and the UK’s FTSE 100 Index rose 0.4 percent. Western European stock markets were closed on Friday for the Good Friday holiday.
Greece’s ASE Index and -Portugal’s PSI-20 were the region’s worst performing markets, falling 2.6 percent and 1.7 percent respectively as the cost of insuring debt sold by the countries rose to records.
Of the Western European companies that that reported earnings since Monday last week, profits have topped estimates by an average of 5 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the US, companies on the S&P 500 index have beaten forecasts by an average of 9.7 percent.
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
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