European stocks posted their biggest weekly rally since early last month as reports from the US to Germany indicated growth is gaining pace and the US Federal Reserve raised its assessment of the world’s biggest economy.
The STOXX 600 Europe Index climbed 2.6 percent to 272.40 during the week. The measure has rallied 11 percent this year on optimism the eurozone will contain the sovereign-debt crisis and as US economic reports beat forecasts.
“The US economy is a very, very strong support for the market,” said Pierre Mouton, a fund manager at Notz Stucki & Cie in Geneva. “The data is confirming that the economy really is rebounding and more rapidly than expected. We’ve turned the page.”
The mean daily volume of shares changing hands on the STOXX 600 this week was 8.6 percent higher than the average in the last 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The VSTOXX Index, which measures the cost of option prices on the Euro STOXX 50 index, slid 4.3 percent to 18.52 on Friday, its lowest level since April last year.
Strains in global financial markets have eased and the US labor market is gathering strength, the US Federal Open Market Committee said on Tuesday.
At the same time, the unemployment rate is “elevated” and “significant downside risks” remain, it said. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is sticking to his plan to the keep benchmark interest rate close to zero through at least 2014.
National benchmark indices rose in all of Europe’s 18 western markets except Portugal. France’s CAC 40 Index jumped 3.1 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 Index added 1.3 percent, while Germany’s DAX rallied 4 percent.
Finance ministers from the 17 nations that use the euro approved the 130 billion euro (US$171 billion) second bailout package for Greece, at their meeting in Brussels on Monday. The agreement capped months of grueling negotiations between Greece, the IMF and eurozone authorities.
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],”
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
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