Wall Street’s main stock indices on Friday rose to fresh all-time closing highs as a spike in oil prices supported energy shares and investors renewed their optimism about US President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.
The S&P 500 tallied its fourth straight session of gains, a day after Trump vowed a major tax announcement in the next few weeks.
The benchmark S&P 500 has surged 8.3 percent since Trump’s Nov. 8 last year election, fueled by expectations he will lower corporate taxes, reduce regulations and increase infrastructure spending.
The rally had stalled amid concerns over Trump’s protectionism and lack of clarity on reforms.
“Investors were worried that the administration may have gotten off track and was pursuing other items,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
“Tax cuts have gotten put back on the front burner,” Forrest said, adding: “We are looking for gains in the economy at large from this, not just [earnings per share] gains in stocks.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 96.97 points, or 0.48 percent, to end at 20,269.37, the S&P 500 gained 8.23 points, or 0.36 percent, to 2,316.10 and the NASDAQ Composite added 18.95 points, or 0.33 percent, to 5,734.13.
For the week, the Dow is up 1 percent, the S&P 500 gained 0.8 percent and the NASDAQ rose 1.2 percent.
On Friday, the S&P and Dow closed at a record high for a second straight session, while the NASDAQ extended its streak of record closes to a fourth day.
Energy shares gained 0.8 percent. Oil prices rose more than 1 percent after reports that OPEC members delivered more than 90 percent of the output cuts they pledged in a deal that took effect last month.
Energy could continue to be in focus next week, when a host of small-cap companies in energy are due to report results.
The S&P financial sector ended up 0.2 percent. The group initially moved higher after Daniel Tarullo, the top US Federal Reserve official charged with financial regulation, said he would resign, creating further room for Trump to reshape the Fed’s policymaking staff.
The focus on Washington comes as large US companies were set for their second straight quarter of profit increases after several periods of declines.
With more than 70 percent of the S&P 500 having reported results, fourth-quarter earnings are on track to have climbed 8.4 percent, which would be the best performance since the third quarter of 2014, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
“We are seeing a pretty solid rate of beats and we’re out of the earnings recession,” said Jason Ware, chief investment officer at Albion Financial Group in Salt Lake City.
Activision Blizzard Inc surged 18.9 percent after the video game publisher reported higher-than-expected revenue and set a US$1 billion share buyback program.
Its shares gave the biggest boost to the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ.
Skechers USA Inc jumped 19.3 percent after the footwear maker’s fourth-quarter revenue beat expectations.
Sears Holdings Corp soared 25.6 percent after the struggling retailer said it would cut costs by US$1 billion and reduce debt and pension obligations by at least US$1.5 billion this year.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.60-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 2.05-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 48 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the NASDAQ recorded 151 new highs and 22 new lows.
About 6.6 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges on Friday, compared with the 6.7 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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