US stock markets posted solid gains in a seesaw week of trade that was dominated by Facebook’s post-IPO slump and heightened fears of a Greek euro exit and Spanish banking crisis.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the week up 0.7 percent, the S&P 500 gained 1.7 percent and the NASDAQ ended the week 2.1 percent higher as investors sought the relative safety of US stocks.
On Friday the Dow closed at 12,454.83 points, the S&P at 1,317.82 and the NASDAQ at 2,837.53.
The week was marked by summits of the G8 and the EU that saw little progress toward halting Europe’s seemingly interminable debt crisis, which looks like it could force Greece out of the eurozone.
“The rhetoric in Europe has heated up in recent days, amid signs that several countries and institutions have contingency plans in the event of a Greek exit,” analysts at Barclays Capital said.
The G8 and EU leaders separately said they wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone, but announced few concrete steps to make that happen.
On June 17, Greeks will go back to the polls. If voters again back parties opposed to the terms of a massive bailout, then markets are betting funding could quickly stop and a default and eurozone exit could follow.
Concerns about the eurozone were compounded by events in Spain. On Friday, the Spanish stock market suspended trade in Bankia’s plunging shares as the struggling lender asked the government for 19 billion euros (US$24 billion) in what would be the largest bank bailout in the country’s history.
Throughout the week there was heavy action in the tech sector.
Facebook on Friday faced a pile of lawsuits over its initial public offering debacle, leaving shares down almost 17 percent to end the week at US$31.91, well below the issue price of US$38.
Computer vendor Dell, once the market leader, dived more than 15 percent after posting a 33 percent drop in profits and falling revenue for its fiscal first quarter.
Hewlett-Packard surged 4 percent after it announced a major restructuring effort involving shedding 27,000 jobs, or 8 percent of its global work force.
Google sank 1.5 percent despite Chinese antitrust regulators signing off on the company’s US$12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility.
Next week attention will turn back to the US, with a revision to economic growth figures on Thursday and key unemployment data for this month on Friday.
US markets are closed tomorrow for the Memorial Day holiday.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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