US stocks markets ended the pre-holiday week by booking solid gains on Friday, after five sessions that saw trade marked by a rare slowdown in bad news from Europe and further evidence of a US recovery.
The major indices began the week in the red amid lingering concerns that the European Central Bank would not step in to stop the eurozone rot.
However, they managed to eke out solid gains by Friday’s close.
While the Frankfurt-based central bank continued to shy away from backing indebted sovereigns, it did open lending windows for European banks, which helped ease panic.
“The signs are encouraging in Europe,” Hugh Johnson of Hugh Johnson Advisors said. “There are some signs, not overwhelming, that things are starting to stabilize in Europe.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 3.6 percent to end the week at 12,294.00 points.
The NASDAQ was up 2.5 percent for the period and the S&P 500 added 3.7 percent for the week.
Stocks were helped by suggestions on Tuesday of a nascent turnaround in the US housing industry, with new home starts up 9.3 percent last month from a year earlier to the best level since April last year, when since-expired government tax credits were driving sales.
“The surge in sales ... suggests the sector is beginning to wake from its long sleep; expect sustained gains in sales and starts ahead,” Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics said.
On Thursday, US stocks scored solid gains on encouraging jobs market data.
Weekly claims for US unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level since April 2008 last week, the US Department of Labor said.
Data from Germany also set a more positive tone.
Germany’s Ifo business sentiment index defied analysts’ expectations and rose to 107.2 points this month from 106.6 last month.
“There can be no talk of a crash as in 2008,” Ifo Institute president Hans-Werner Sinn said.
From India to China to the US, automakers cannot make vehicles — not that no one wants any, but because a more than US$450 billion industry for semiconductors got blindsided. How did both sides end up here? Over the past two weeks, automakers across the world have bemoaned the shortage of chips. Germany’s Audi, owned by Volkswagen AG, would delay making some of its high-end vehicles because of what chief executive officer Markus Duesmann called a “massive” shortfall in an interview with the Financial Times. The firm has furloughed more than 10,000 workers and reined in production. That is a further blow
MOBILE SMART: The Dimensity 1200 is 22 percent better in terms of performance than its predecessor, and 25 percent more power-efficient, the handset chip designer said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday unveiled its premium 5G processors — the Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100 — as it vies for a larger slice of the world’s rapidly growing 5G smartphone market. Manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) 6-nanometer process technology, the Dimensity 1200 processor performs 22 percent better than the previous generation Dimensity 1000+ processor, and is 25 percent more power-efficient, MediaTek said. Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Realme Mobile Telecommunications (Shenzhen) Co (銳爾覓移動通信) are to be the first adopters of the latest Dimensity chips, the companies said during a virtual media briefing. Xiaomi plans to equip its first
Answering to a reported request by Germany to help address a chip shortage in its auto industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday said that it was in talks with domestic chip suppliers. Foreign media over the weekend reported that German Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier had sent a request to Taipei to ask Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to cooperate more closely with German automakers to provide microchips and sensors, to bridge a shortage that has emerged over the past few months. The MOEA said that it had not yet received the request and could therefore not elaborate
FOCUS ON FOUNDRIES: An analyst said that some investors would be disappointed because they were expecting a larger announcement of a partnership with TSMC Intel Corp’s incoming chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger on Thursday pledged to regain the company’s lead in chip manufacturing, countering growing calls from some investors to shed that part of its business. “I am confident that the majority of our 2023 products will be manufactured internally,” Gelsinger said. “At the same time, given the breadth of our portfolio, it’s likely that we will expand our use of external foundries for certain technologies and products.” He plans to provide more details after officially taking over the CEO role on Feb. 15, but Gelsinger was clear that Intel is sticking with its once mighty
RSS