The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday barely reached a seventh straight record high, and the S&P 500 and NASDAQ also closed at a record as gains in Kraft Heinz Food Co helped offset selling in energy stocks.
After suffering losses for most of the session, the Dow and S&P 500 turned positive in the final minutes of a week fueled by the “Trump rally” that has seen stocks surge since the November last year US presidential election.
“Corporate earnings are fine, the economy’s fine, the Fed’s going to raise rates, and that’s great for financials,” LPL Financial chief economic strategist John Canally said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Kraft Heinz jumped 10.74 percent after it said it would continue to pursue a US$143 billion bid for Unilever PLC, despite being rebuffed. Unilever’s US-listed shares surged 14 percent.
Eight of the 11 major S&P sectors rose, with consumer staples adding 0.66 percent, helped by Kraft Heinz as well as a 4.32 percent increase in Colgate-Palmolive Co and a 4.19 percent rise in Kimberly-Clark Corp.
The S&P energy sector fell 0.53 percent as oil prices slipped.
Signs of a strengthening US economy as well as anticipated tax cuts were behind the most recent optimism.
With a strong fourth-quarter earnings season mostly complete, many investors say they need concrete signs of progress from US President Donald Trump on his policy plans.
Uncertainty around other potential Trump policies is an additional risk, some investors said.
“People are focusing on only the good of what his campaign promises were,” CFRA Research investment strategist Lindsey Bell said. “What makes me nervous is that it feels like the market is ignoring what could come on immigration, trade, healthcare — the negative implications that could come from a protectionist government.”
With a long weekend ahead in the US due to the Presidents’ Day holiday tomorrow, trading was a bit lighter than usual.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose a marginal 0.02 percent to end at 20,624.05, while the S&P 500 gained 0.17 percent to 2,351.16. The NASDAQ Composite added 0.41 percent to 5,838.58.
For the week, the Dow rose 1.7 percent, the S&P 500 added 1.5 percent and the NASDAQ gained 1.8 percent.
UnitedHealth Group Inc sank 3.68 percent after it was sued by the US Department of Justice over Medicare charges.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 1.15-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 1.26-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 46 new 52-week highs and one new low; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 141 new highs and 24 new lows.
About 6.4 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges on Friday, below the daily average of 6.8 billion over the past 20 sessions.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to