US stocks on Friday joined a global rally as investors reassessed the European Central Bank’s (ECB) massive stimulus package in a positive light a day after a wild ride on markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 17,213.31, up a hefty 218.18 points (1.28 percent).
The broad-market S&P 500 advanced 32.62 (1.64 percent) to 2,022.19, while the tech-rich NASDAQ jumped 86.31 (1.85 percent) to 4,748.47, as heavyweight Apple Inc added 1.1 percent.
Wall Street kept in positive territory all day, following Europe’s markets higher as investors digested the ECB’s mixed monetary policy announcement on Thursday.
ECB President Mario Draghi had suggested that the eurozone’s central bank was not planning further interest rate cuts after delivering a larger-than-expected package of actions, sending stocks lower on Thursday.
Pointing to gains in European financial shares, Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com said that investors decided the ECB did the banks a solid favor by introducing new targeted longer-term refinancing operations and agreeing to include corporate bonds into its quantitative easing bond-buying program.
“Sure, deposit rates went deeper into negative territory, but if Mr Draghi is right and they are not going any lower, investors must be thinking that they can now only go higher. That is a plus for net interest margins down the road,” he said.
JPMorgan Chase & Co, the largest US bank, gained 1.3 percent, while Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc both leaped 3.9 percent, Goldman Sachs Group Inc 1.9 percent and American Express Co 1.2 percent.
Blue-chip industrials scored big advances, with DuPont Co up 2.7 percent, Caterpillar 2 percent, Boeing Co 1.4 percent and General Electric Co 1.3 percent.
Analysts also cited market support from an International Energy Agency report that said falling oil prices “might have bottomed out.”
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