European stocks advanced for a fourth week, the longest winning streak in almost three months, as the region’s leaders eased constraints on national budgets and US retail sales and jobless benefit claims pointed to a recovery in the world’s biggest economy.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index gained 0.7 percent to 297.46 this past week. The gauge slipped 0.4 percent on Friday, retreating from the highest level since June 2008. Spain sold 803 million euros (US$1.05 billion) of debt at an extraordinary auction on Thursday and Italy issued 6.99 billion euros of securities the previous day. Ireland sold its first 10-year bond since receiving a EU-led bailout three years ago.
“The key driver is still of course the international monetary policy from central banks,” Kliegel & Hafner AG senior market strategist Andreas Lipkow said.
The STOXX 600 surged 6.4 percent this year as US politicians agreed on a compromise budget and the US Federal Reserve Thursday, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of US shares climbed to within two points of its 1,565.15 record close set in October 2007.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels endorsed “structural” budgetary assessments, using code for granting countries such as France, Spain and Portugal extra time to bring down deficits. Still, balanced budgets remained the goal and there was no talk of large-scale spending programs.
In the US, applications for jobless benefits unexpectedly dropped to the lowest level in almost two months in the week ended on March 9. Retail sales and industrial production rose more than forecast last month, separate reports showed.
National benchmark indices climbed in in 12 of the 18 Western European markets. Germany’s DAX rallied 0.7 percent, while France’s CAC 40 and the UK’s FTSE 100 added 0.1 percent. The Swiss Market Index advanced 1.5 percent to the highest level since January 2008.
A gauge of insurers was the best performer among the 19 industry groups in the STOXX 600, gaining 2.4 percent. The insurers were led by the UK’s Prudential PLC, which rallied 14 percent, the biggest gain in 15 months.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by