European stocks rose for a second week as US consumer spending gained, business activity and factory orders topped forecasts and US Federal Reserve minutes showed some policy makers wanted to add to stimulus measures.
The market pared its weekly gain on Friday as data showing no growth in US jobs spurred concern that the world’s largest economy won’t help offset weakness caused by Europe’s sovereign- debt crisis.
Hargreaves Lansdown PLC rose the most this week in the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, soaring 24 percent, after profit increased. Bouygues SA surged 15 percent after announcing a stock buyback and raising its full-year sales forecast.
Eiffage SA sank 13 percent after earnings missed estimates.
The STOXX 600 climbed 3.4 percent this week, the most in two months, after slumping 2.4 percent yesterday.
The gauge still posted the biggest monthly decline last month since October 2008, falling 10 percent, amid concern the economic recovery is weakening.
The retreat has left the Stoxx 600 trading at 9.7 percent the estimated earnings of its constituent companies, near the lowest valuation since March 2009.
“European equities look very cheap compared with bonds and one must make extremely negative assumptions to arrive at a different conclusion,” said Raimund Saxinger, a fund manager at Frankfurt-Trust Investment GMBH, which oversees about US$22 billion.
“Regarding macro-economic data, we’re seeing a discrepancy between the hard data that looks encouraging and soft data, based on surveys, that is disappointing. The question is which one is right? One important thing in the coming weeks will be to see whether sentiment-based indicators are improving,” he said.
The STOXX 600 pared some of its weekly advance after a report showed that the US economy added no jobs last month and the unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent.
Payrolls were unchanged last month, their weakest reading since September last year, after an 85,000 gain in July that was less than initially estimated, according to a US Labor Department release. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for an increase of 68,000 in August.
European sovereign default risk rose to a record after the report, which added to signs that the global economic recovery is weakening.
The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of credit-default swaps insuring the debt of 15 governments rose 11 basis points to 310, surpassing an all-time high closing price of 308 on Aug. 26.
Swaps tied to Italian debt jumped 15 basis points to 400, topping last month’s record closing price of 391, according to CMA.
National benchmark indexes gained in all of the 18 western European markets. France’s CAC 40 Index rose 2 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 Index added 3.1 percent and Germany’s DAX Index advanced less than 0.1 percent.
Greece’s ASE Index rose 1.3 percent, its first weekly gain in six weeks.
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