Wall Street celebrated on Friday after tech companies and industrials powered US stock markets to five straight days of growth, despite continuing fears over Europe’s debt crisis and continued liquidity.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 4.7 percent for the week to close at 11,509.09, back above its closing level from Aug. 5, just before Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the US roiled global markets.
The last time that the Dow enjoyed five consecutive days of growth was in late June.
The S&P 500 gained 5.35 percent for the week to close at 1,216.01, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite surged 6.25 percent to 2,622.31.
“We’ve seen good leadership in technology, in banks, in retails. This is positive. It has been a very constructive week,” said Marc Pado, US market strategist for Cantor Fitzgerald.
Strong performers included chipmaker Intel, up 11.5 percent; Apple, up 6.1 percent; and Cisco, the maker of networking hardware, up 5.1 percent over the past week.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
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SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the