US stocks edged higher on Friday as gains from energy companies, industrial firms and smaller companies helped the market end a modest losing streak.
Oil and gas companies climbed along with the price of oil, while industrial companies recovered some of the losses they sustained earlier this month.
Beauty products retailer Ulta Beauty Inc and software company Adobe Systems Inc rose after strong quarterly reports.
Tiffany & Co dropped after reporting weak sales, and online retailers Overstock.com Inc and Wayfair Inc slumped as investors worried about a possible price war.
All this week, US stocks moved higher in early trading, only to shed those gains as the day went on. They broke out of that pattern on Friday, even though the gains were mostly modest.
“From an investor point of view, the fact that we haven’t rallied right back to the highs is a good thing,” Charles Schwab Corp vice president of trading and derivatives Randy Frederick said.
Positive news about the economy has been countered by concerns about rising tensions over international trade.
“The pullback that we’ve been in is pretty much driven by [US] President [Donald] Trump’s proclamation about tariffs,” Frederick said.
The S&P 500 on Friday gained 4.68 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,752.01, a drop of 1.2 percent from 2,786.57 on March 9.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday added 72.85 points, or 0.3 percent, to 24,946.51, falling 1.5 percent from 25,335.74 a week earlier.
The NASDAQ Composite on Friday edged up 0.25 points, or 0.04 percent, to 7,481.99, sliding 1 percent from 7,560.81 on March 9.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks on Friday jumped 9.43 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,586.05, a decrease of 0.7 percent from 1,597.14 a week earlier.
After a dramatic drop at the beginning of last month, followed by a rapid recovery of some of their losses, stocks have bounced around for the past month.
The Dow, which surged past 26,000 in mid-January, has been wobbling at about 25,000 for about a month.
The S&P 500 fell for the first four days of the week. The worst losses came on Tuesday and Wednesday after Trump blocked Singapore-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp’s effort to buy US rival Qualcomm Inc and European leaders warned about the risks of trade disputes.
The US Federal Reserve reported that manufacturing output continued to rise as companies in the US produced more computers, furniture and vehicles.
It reported that manufacturing output last month rose 1.2 percent after three months of weak results.
Factory output has increased 2.5 percent over the past year.
The US Department of Commerce said homebuilders started work on fewer apartment buildings last month, which caused overall housing starts to drop 7 percent.
Builders have shifted their efforts to single-family homes as the economy has improved.
While Broadcom is no longer trying to buy Qualcomm, both companies are still at the center of deal discussions.
The Financial Times reported that former Qualcomm chairman Paul Jacobs wants to take the company private and has had talks with potential investors and the Qualcomm board.
Qualcomm added US$0.73, or 1.2 percent, to US$60.62, which gives it a market value of about US$90 billion.
With the Qualcomm deal finished, Broadcom said it still sees opportunities for other acquisitions.
The company also disclosed its quarterly results, and its shares fell US$12.89, or 4.8 percent, to US$254.87.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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