European stocks tumbled in volatile trading on Friday, capping their worst week since August 2011, as a decline in energy companies outweighed better-than-expected US jobs data.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index fell 1.5 percent to 341.35 at the close, after swinging between gains and losses for most of the day. The gauge rose in early trading after China’s introduction of measures to stabilize its markets boosted global equities, before sliding oil stocks dragged it lower. A rally of as much as 0.9 percent after the US report did not last long.
“Volatility will remain a permanent companion,” said Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, who helps manage about 250 million euros (US$272 million) as head of trading at MPPM EK in Eppstein, Germany. “We reacted to China earlier, but it faded. The big picture still remains cloudy, with the two main risk factors right now being commodity prices and whether the Chinese government has things under control.”
The STOXX 600 slipped 6.7 percent this week, its worst weekly decline since August 2011, as cuts to the yuan’s reference rate stoked concern that Chinese growth is slowing more than previously forecast. The VSTOXX Index measuring volatility expectations in eurozone shares posted its biggest weekly advance since April last year.
Germany’s DAX, which on Friday fell below 10,000 for the first time since October, reversed gains to slide 1.3 percent, extending its drop this week to 8.3 percent, the worst since August 2011. The equity benchmark, whose exporters have a significant exposure to China, also posted the worst weekly performance among western-European markets, including Greece.
In the US, the 292,000 gain in payrolls exceeded the highest forecast in a Bloomberg survey and followed a 252,000 increase in November that was stronger than previously estimated, a US Department of Labor report showed on Friday.
“The US jobs data confirms that the [US Federal Reserve] was not wrong in raising rates in December,” said John Plassard, senior equity-sales trader at Mirabaud Securities LLP in Geneva.
BP PLC, Total SA and Royal Dutch Shell PLC dragged a gauge of energy-related stocks to the worst performance of the 19 industry groups on the STOXX 600 and its lowest level since 2009. The measure also posted its worst weekly drop since 2011 as crude declined.
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