After fluctuating between gains and losses, European stocks advanced on Friday to cap their biggest four-day rally in more than two years.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index added 0.4 percent to 340.3 at the close of trading, after earlier rising as much as 0.8 percent and falling 0.6 percent. The measure posted its fifth weekly advance in six.
Energy stocks contributed the most to gains, while a drop in healthcare companies was the biggest drag as Roche Holding AG slid.
European shares jumped the most since November 2011 on Friday, rebounding for a third day after the US Federal Reserve pledged to be patient in increasing interest rates and the Swiss National Bank introduced its first negative deposit rate since the 1970s. The STOXX 600 has advanced 3 percent this week, recovering more than half of its monthly losses.
“Low interest rate policy-addicted markets are being comforted and there is no other option for cash other than to participate by owning stocks it seems,” Daniel Weston, chief investment officer at Aimed Capital GmbH in Munich, Germany, wrote in an e-mail.
Shares were volatile on Friday. Some futures and options on stocks and indices expired in a process known as quadruple witching. That often increases volatility and trading volume. The number of STOXX 600 shares changing hands was 40 percent greater than the average for the past 30 days, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Miners and energy producers rose for a fourth day. BHP Billiton Ltd added 3.6 percent and Rio Tinto Group gained 2.1 percent, while Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC climbed more than 2.5 percent. Oil and gas companies posted their biggest weekly jump in three years.
Atos advanced 6.2 percent after agreeing to buy Xerox Corp’s information technology outsourcing business for US$1.05 billion, almost tripling the French computer services provider’s business in the US.
Roche slid 6.3 percent. The drugmaker reported disappointing results from a clinical trial that combined two of its newer breast-cancer drugs, denting hopes of broadening the market for treatments that are already among its fastest-growing products. MorphoSys AG sank 11 percent after Roche ended a drug trial for Alzheimer’s disease.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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