Strong US retail sales lifted the Dow to a fourth straight record on Friday as global equity markets finished a big week of gains on a muted note.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average record came after a robust US retail sales report for last month gave further evidence of momentum in the world’s biggest economy.
US stocks otherwise showed signs of fatigue, with the S&P 500 ending modestly lower, snapping a streak of four straight records.
“We’ve had an incredible run,” TD Ameritrade chief strategist J.J. Kinahan said. “Things don’t continue to go straight up.”
European equities, which also had big gains for the week, finished in indecisive fashion after a deadly attack in Nice, France, darkened sentiment.
Paris dipped, while London posted modest gains and Frankfurt was flat.
Asian equities were buoyed by a report showing Chinese economic growth at a better-than-expected 6.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter. Bourses in Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong all rose.
The encouraging China data also boosted oil prices, while the dollar gained against the euro and other major currencies following the solid US retail sales data.
Travel and airline stocks were under pressure in both Europe and the US after the French attack that killed at least 84 people, including 10 children, as a giant truck mowed through a crowd celebrating France’s national holiday on Thursday night.
The attack was a new blow to France’s tourism sector, which was already reeling from repeated terrorist attacks.
French group Accor Hotels lost 3 percent, while British airline EasyJet PLC shed 2.6 percent. US-listed cruise companies Carnival Cruise Line and Norwegian Cruise Lines lost 2.2 percent and 3.7 percent respectively.
Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare said the broader US stock market was not significantly moved by the Nice calamity.
“The limited losses show ... how senseless acts of terrorism don’t resonate fully in capital markets unless they are perceived to have a material economic impact,” he said.
“There is certain to be some economic fallout in France, yet the ripple effect to the global economy of this latest terrorist act is considered largely to be de minimis.”
Among individual stocks, US banking giant Wells Fargo & Co dropped 2.5 percent as it reported second-quarter earnings of US$1.01 per share, meeting expectations.
The bank said it continued to face pressure from soured loans to the troubled oil and gas industry.
Japanese game maker Nintendo Co jumped another 9.8 percent, its latest gain in the wake of the Pokemon Go phenomenon sweeping the planet.
Messaging app Line Corp rocketed up 32 percent in its Tokyo trading debut on Friday, a day after an eye-popping jump in its New York launch, as investors cheered the year’s biggest technology share sale.
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