The three major US stocks indices ended higher on Friday, snapping three days of losses, as investors bet on slower US rate hikes, but gains were muted by increasingly aggressive exchanges between the US and North Korea.
Weaker-than-expected consumer price data for last month led investors to bet that benign inflation would keep the US Federal Reserve from raising rates again this year.
While this gave investors some hope after a jittery week, there were still signs of nervousness in choppy late afternoon trading, primarily due to ongoing threats between the US and North Korea.
US President Donald Trump on Friday said that the US military was “locked and loaded,” while Pyongyang accused him of driving the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.
He told reporters in the late afternoon that he hoped North Korea “fully” understood the gravity of his warning about taking military action against the US or its allies.
While the data gave investors appetite for growth sectors, such as information technology and biotechnology, it soured them to rate-sensitive stocks, such as banks, said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at SunTrust Advisory Services Inc in Atlanta.
“There’s not a great incentive to buy big. You’re less than 2 percent off the high for the S&P heading into a weekend where uncertainty with North Korea still lingers,” Lerner said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday rose 14.31 points, or 0.07 percent, to 21,858.32, the S&P 500 gained 3.11 points, or 0.13 percent, to 2,441.32 while the NASDAQ Composite added 39.68 points, or 0.64 percent, to 6,256.56.
For the week the S&P fell 1.4 percent and the Dow lost 1.1 percent — their largest weekly drops since the week ending on March 24 — and the NASDAQ was off 1.5 percent.
Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management LLC in Austin, Texas, said he was reassured after Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan said the Fed needs evidence of progress toward its inflation goal before raising rates.
“If earnings can stay strong and interest rates remain low, investors can look beyond North Korea and continue to rally equities,” Phipps said.
Traders saw the chance of a rate hike in December falling to 40 percent from 42 percent before Friday’s data, according to federal funds futures.
Nearly US$1 trillion has been wiped out from global equity markets since Trump’s vow on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it threatens the US.
Five of the 11 major S&P sectors ended higher on Friday, with technology’s 0.75 percent rise leading the advancers.
However, the S&P Bank sub-sector fell 0.7 percent on dimming prospects of another rate hike this year since higher rates tend to boost bank profits.
While the Russell 2000 index ended up 0.1 percent on the day, it was more than 5 percent below its July 25 record and for the week it fell 2.7 percent, its biggest weekly drop since February last year.
Shares of Snap Inc ended down 14 percent after hitting a record low following a miss on revenue and daily active users.
At least 12 brokerages cut their price targets on the stock.
J.C. Penney Co finished down 16.6 percent after hitting a record low following the retailer’s bigger-than-expected quarterly loss.
Advancing issues barely outnumbered decliner on the New York Stock Exchange by a 1.15-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 1.10-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
About 6.15 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges in Friday, below the 6.29 billion average for the past 20 sessions.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”