US stocks ended lower on Friday, with healthcare stocks leading the declines, as investors cashed in on a post-election rally and waited for clarity on the next administration’s policies.
Wall Street equities took a breather after rising dramatically since Republican candidate Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the presidential election on Nov. 8.
While the three major indices closed higher for the second week in a row, the rally lost some steam this week as investors awaited more information to support their bets that Trump could succeed in passing proposals to lift infrastructure spending and reduce taxes.
Photo: AP
“I see the market kind of churning here because it’s had a very decent move,” said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O’Neil Securities in New York. “Trump’s policies continue to be just rhetoric, because none of it has been enacted.”
The Dow Jones industrial average on Friday fell 35.89 points, or 0.19 percent, to 18,867.93, while the S&P 500 dropped 5.22 points, or 0.24 percent, to 2,181.90. The NASDAQ Composite slipped 12.46 points, or 0.23 percent, to 5,321.51 after hitting a record of 5,346.8.
For the week, the Dow is up 0.1 percent from last week’s 18,847.66; the S&P is 0.8 higher from last week’s 2,164.45; and the NASDAQ is up 1.6 percent from last week’s 5,237.10.
The NASDAQ’s biggest drags came from technology companies, such as Alphabet Inc, and drug firms, including Amgen.
Six of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors closed lower on Friday. Losses in shares of Allergan PLC and Merck were the biggest drags on the S&P health sector, which led the decliners.
The health index pared its post-election lift, but was still 1.8 percent higher than on Nov. 8, even after Friday’s drop of 1.2 percent.
Only five of the index’s stocks ended higher.
Consumer staples fell 0.4 percent, weighed down by a 1.3 percent fall in Procter & Gamble.
The S&P Energy sector was the second-best performer, with a 0.5 percent increase as producers added to rig count, suggesting they might be expecting a demand boost.
The S&P financial sector ended up 0.08 percent, and has risen 10.8 percent since the US election, boosted by prospect of higher interest rates and lighter regulation.
St Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard on Friday said he was leaning toward supporting an increase next month and that the real question would be the Fed’s rate path next year.
Kansas City Fed President Esther George said that while she supports raising rates, the US central bank must do so only gradually.
The comments added to Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s Thursday statement that the rate hike could come “relatively soon.”
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.10-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 1.18-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 32 new 52-week highs and 4 new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 253 new highs and 30 new lows.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by