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.
Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday announced plans to buy a New York office building for US$2.1 billion, confirming its push into the US’ largest city despite the COVID-19 teleworking trend. This is the largest real-estate purchase in the US for an office building since the beginning of the global spread of COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal quoted Real Capital Analytics as saying. Google already rents the premises in Manhattan, which are located on the site of a former railroad terminal in the Hudson Square neighborhood. The Silicon Valley giant envisions a campus with a total surface area of 160,000m2 by mid-2023
Cash-strapped developer China Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has begun repaying investors in its wealth management products with real estate, said Hengda Real Estate Group Co Ltd (恆大地產), its main unit. Evergrande, with more than US$300 billion in liabilities, is in the throes of a liquidity crisis that has left it racing to raise funds to pay its many lenders and suppliers. It has a bond interest payment of US$83.5 million due on Thursday. The company said on WeChat on Saturday that investors interested in redeeming wealth management products for physical assets should contact their investment consultants or visit local offices. Financial news outlet Caixin on
‘CORE VALUES’: The contract chipmaker did not specify why the employees were dismissed, but media reports said they had leaked information about customer orders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has fired seven of its employees for violating the company’s “core values,” the world’s largest contract chipmaker said yesterday. While the company did not disclose exactly why it fired the seven employees, local media reports earlier in the day said that the employees had leaked confidential information about customer orders. In a statement, the company said that it fired the seven at once, adding that it released an internal notice last week to inform the entire company of the move ahead of the four-day Mid-Autumn Festival holilday, which ended on Tuesday. TSMC said it fired the seven
MILD ADJUSTMENT: Two previous efforts failed to curtail mortgage financing, although the new measures should not affect property prices, the central bank governor said The central bank yesterday tightened credit controls for second-home mortgages in specific areas and purchases of plots of land, especially in industrial parks. However, the nation’s top monetary policymaker kept its policy rate at a record-low 1.125 percent for the sixth consecutive quarter, despite revising up its GDP growth forecast for this year from 5.08 percent to 5.75 percent. “Board members factored in economic uncertainty at home and around the world,” central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said, adding that growing inflationary pressure was a temporary phenomenon induced by bad weather and a low base effect for oil prices. International fuel price increases
RSS