US stocks retreated, sending the S&P 500 Index lower for the sixth time in seven days, amid selling in healthcare and technology shares that have been the market’s weakest all year.
Apple Inc posted its biggest slide in five weeks, dragging down the tech group after regulators in China said the latest iPhones violated a design patent of a Chinese company.
Google parent Alphabet Inc and Merck & Co fell more than 2.7 percent, while the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index slid 2 percent to mark the longest losing streak in 20 years.
Commodity shares rallied with crude oil, helping to lift equities off the worst levels of the day.
The S&P 500 declined 0.3 percent to 2,071.22 at 4pm in New York, resuming a slide after rising on Thursday to halt the longest stretch of losses since February.
The gauge posted the second consecutive weekly drop, falling 1.2 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 57.94 points, or 0.3 percent, to 17,675.16.
The NASDAQ Composite Index sank 0.9 percent to the lowest since May 23.
“The market is nervous about valuations in general, they’re still nervous about the [US] Fed and what they’re going to do, and what Europe is going to do,” Thomas Garcia, head of equity trading at Thornburg Investment Management Inc in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said by telephone. “There’s a lot more to worry about than just Brexit. We just can’t break these levels either way, and we’re just trading in a range.”
About 9.1 billion shares traded hands on US exchanges, 30 percent above the three-month average after a quarterly event known as quadruple witching, when futures and options contracts on indexes and individual stocks expire. Some of the biggest instruments for protection against losses in equities rolled over just a few days before the UK’s referendum on secession, an event that forces would-be hedgers to take up new positions.
Equities were whipsawed on Thursday, erasing losses that had reached 1 percent, after both sides on the Brexit issued suspended their campaigns following the murder of British member of parliament Jo Cox, who was a “Remain” proponent. The event shifted investor sentiment after a series of polls in recent days indicated more Britons favor leaving the EU.
Stocks in Europe rose on Friday as Brexit concerns abated and energy shares followed oil higher.
“When you look at the difference in markets between the US and Europe, for the past week the US has gone down significantly less than Europe,” said Walter Todd, who oversees about US$1.1 billion as chief investment officer for Greenwood Capital Associates LLC in South Carolina. “So you may just be seeing a relief rally in Europe, and even with the US down it’s still outperforming international markets for the past week.”
Bookmakers’ odds today indicated a lower chance of the “Leave” side winning.
US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and central banks in Britain, Japan, Canada and Switzerland have warned this week over the potential for economic damage in the event of a secession.
Meanwhile, investors have been bracing for turbulence like never before. Trading volume for securities linked to the CBOE Volatility Index surged to a record high this week. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX edged up 0.2 percent on Friday to 19.41, bringing its monthly gain to about 37 percent, on track for the most since August.
Concern that Britain will exit the union, and thereby weaken the global economy, has weighed on financial markets ahead of the vote on Thursday next week, with the S&P 500 headed for its biggest weekly decline since April.
Investors were also unnerved by a mediocre growth outlook implied by Yellen’s dovishness after Wednesday’s Fed meeting, as well as a lack of action from other prominent central banks that fueled perceptions policymakers are increasingly at a loss about what to do in the face of a struggling global economy.
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