European stocks rose, trimming their worst weekly loss of the year.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index added 0.3 percent to 395.54 at the close of trading. The benchmark gauge almost erased its gains in the final hour of trading amid losses in miners and energy shares, before moving higher.
The STOXX 600 has rallied 15 percent this year amid the European Central Bank’s (ECB) quantitative-easing plan (QE), poised for the best quarter since 2009.
ECB President Mario Draghi on Thursday said he is confident the program will reach its 60 billion- euro (US$65 billion) goal even in a shortened first month.
“Central banks are still a critical aspect of equities as an asset class,” London-based Peel Hunt LLP market strategist Ian Williams said by telephone. “We’re at the point where the beneficial effects of QE have just started. It’s showing up in the sentiment indicators, but it’s not showing up in the hard economic data yet.”
Earlier on Friday, the STOXX 600 trimmed an advance of as much as 0.8 percent after a US Department of Commerce update showed that the US economy expanded at a slower pace than economists had forecast.
Europe’s benchmark gauge has fallen 2.1 percent this week, led by a decline in technology shares and commodity producers, while Saudi Arabia and its allies began bombing rebels in Yemen. Saudi-led coalition forces struck an air force base near an oil field east of Yemen’s capital on Friday.
Healthcare companies contributed the most to the STOXX 600’s advance on Friday. Novo Nordisk A/S jumped 10 percent after saying it will resubmit a new insulin product to US regulators based on an early analysis from a study, taking the treatment closer to potential customers.
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],”
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
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