Wall Street rallied on Friday, led by tech stocks on the back of Applied Materials’ strong profit forecast, ending a volatile week on a positive note.
The S&P 500 eked out gains for the week after three straight weeks of losses, while the NASDAQ snapped a four-week losing streak. Despite gains on Friday, the Dow ended its fourth consecutive week in the red.
The tech sector led the way on Friday, lifted by a higher-than-expected profit forecast from chip company Applied Materials Inc, which jumped 13.8 percent. Apple Inc rose 1.1 percent and the shares snapped a four-week losing streak.
“The tech sector, which is pretty big, is having a pretty good day, led by the Applied Materials earnings,” said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The US Federal Reserve surprised investors when the central bank’s minutes, released on Wednesday, opened the door to a rate increase next month, roiling financial markets.
Traders now give a 30 percent chance of a rate hike at the Fed’s meeting next month, according to the CME FedWatch tool, about twice as high as they expected on Tuesday.
“The market is starting to come to grips with the Fed potentially moving in June,” said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital Associates in Greenwood, South Carolina. “I think it’s potentially a positive dynamic if the market can actually go up in the face of the Fed probability going up.”
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 65.54 points, or 0.38 percent, to 17,500.94, while the S&P 500 gained 12.28 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,052.32 and the NASDAQ Composite added 57.03 points, or 1.21 percent, to 4,769.56.
Nine of 10 S&P sectors ended higher.
The S&P is marginally positive for this year. The benchmark index has rebounded about 13 percent off of February lows, but is little changed in recent weeks amid mixed corporate earnings and economic data.
Data on Friday showed US home resales rose more than expected last month, suggesting the economy continues to gather pace during the second quarter.
Economic data will garner most of the attention next week, with investors placing a heavy weight on a host of reports as they try and determine the likelihood of a rate hike next month.
In other corporate results, Deere & Co shares fell 5.5 percent to US$77.74. The farm equipment maker cut its profit outlook further and reported lower quarterly earnings.
Campbell Soup Co shares tumbled 6.4 percent to US$59.90 after disappointing sales.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,447 to 580, for a 4.22-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the NASDAQ, 2,151 issues rose and 667 fell for a 3.22-to-1 ratio favoring advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 14 new 52-week highs and one new low; the NASDAQ recorded 33 new highs and 31 new lows.
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