European stocks slid, posting the biggest retreat since they began rallying in January, as concern over Greek debt was exacerbated by declines in the US and Asia.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index lost 1.8 percent to 403.69 at the close of trading, completing the worst week of the year.
The Greek ASE Index slid 3 percent, with the National Bank of Greece SA and Alpha Bank AE tumbling more than 7 percent, as the country struggled to win more aid to avoid a default.
Germany’s DAX plunged 5.5 percent this week, the most since 2011.
European stocks fell for a second day after reaching a fresh peak on Wednesday, taking weekly losses to 2.2 percent. The STOXX 600 is still up 18 percent this year amid European Central Bank stimulus, and trades near the highest level relative to projected profits of its members in at least a decade.
“We’ve become a bit more cautious over the past few months because markets have been rallying pretty rapidly,” said Dirk Thiels, head of investment management at KBC Asset Management in Brussels. “Valuations are pricing in a lot. Stocks are still pretty close to a record.”
The volume of STOXX 600-listed shares traded was 22 percent higher than the 30-day average, data compiled by Bloomberg show. All 19 industry groups fell.
Greek stocks plunged 6 percent this week for the worst performance among Western European markets. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned on Thursday that she would not let the country miss a debt payment.
“The major macro thing at play now is the Greek saga,” Thiels said. “There’s a low chance of a Greek exit, but anything between that and a full-fledged rescue is also possible.”
European and US stocks fell with China’s index futures after regulators in the world’s second-biggest economy clamped down on the use of shadow financing for equity purchases and expanded the supply of shares available for short sellers.
Among stocks moving on corporate news, Syngenta AG dropped 4.4 percent after first-quarter sales missed projections. SKF AB tumbled 8.2 percent after reporting profit below estimates. Abertis Infraestructuras SA fell 2.7 percent as an investor sold a stake.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
JOINT EFFORTS: MediaTek would partner with Denso to develop custom chips to support the car-part specialist company’s driver-assist systems in an expanding market MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s largest mobile phone chip designer, yesterday said it is working closely with Japan’s Denso Corp to build a custom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) solution tailored for advanced driver-assistance systems and cockpit systems, adding another customer to its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business. This effort merges Denso’s automotive-grade safety expertise and deep vehicle integration with MediaTek’s technologies cultivated through the development of Media- Tek’s Dimensity AX, leveraging efficient, high-performance SoCs and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to offer a scalable, production-ready platform for next-generation driver assistance, the company said in a statement yesterday. “Through this collaboration, we are bringing two
RSS