US stocks made up for a shaky week with a strong finish on Friday as Apple Inc led a rally in technology companies. The tech giant hit an all-time high after Warren Buffett said he had made another big investment.
Stocks got off to a mixed start after trade talks between the US and China ended with few signs of progress, while last month’s US jobs report showed that hiring continued at a solid clip and wages continued to grow at a slow pace.
Alphabet Inc, Cisco Systems Inc and other technology companies rose, and retailers, banks and household goods makers also rallied.
Investors also cheered strong first-quarter results from companies including Shake Shack Inc and Activision Blizzard Inc.
“We went into this earnings season with very high expectations,” Prudential Financial Inc chief markets strategist Quincy Krosby said. “When you go in with such high expectations, you expect near perfection.”
The S&P 500 index on Friday climbed 33.69 points, or 1.3 percent, to 2,663.42. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 332.36 points, or 1.4 percent, to 24,262.51. The NASDAQ composite jumped 121.47 points, or 1.7 percent, to 7,209.62.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gained 19.05 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,565.60.
Overall, stocks have taken small losses in choppy trading over the past two weeks.
However, for Apple, this was the best week in six-and-a-half years.
Apple rose 3.9 percent to US$183.83 after Buffett told CNBC that his company boosted its investment in Apple to more than 240 million shares altogether.
Buffett told CNBC about the purchase ahead of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s annual meeting this weekend.
Berkshire stock rose 2.1 percent to US$195.64.
Apple climbed 13.3 percent for the week after it reported solid quarterly results and investors were pleased with its forecast of solid iPhone sales, which came as a relief.
It also raised its dividend and announced a big stock repurchase.
Bond prices rose early, but later gave up that gain. The yield on the two-year Treasury note rose to 2.49 percent from 2.48 percent.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note remained at 2.95 percent. That helped banks recover from an early loss.
Lower bond yields mean lower rates for mortgages and other types of loans, which reduces profits for banks.
Companies that pay big dividends did not rise as much as the rest of the market.
Benchmark US crude rose 1.9 percent to US$69.72 per barrel in New York.
Brent crude, the international standard, gained 1.7 percent to US$74.87 per barrel in London.
Wholesale gasoline jumped 1.3 percent to US$2.11 a gallon. Heating oil climbed 2 percent to US$2.15 a gallon. Natural gas lost 0.6 percent to US$2.71 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Gold gained 0.2 percent to US$1,314.70 an ounce. Silver added 0.4 percent to US$16.52 an ounce. Copper rose 0.2 percent to US$3.09 a pound.
The US dollar fell to ¥109.11 from ¥109.73.
The euro fell to US$1.1962 from US$1.1993.
Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.9 percent and the DAX in Germany added 1 percent.
France’s CAC 40 gained 0.3 percent.
The South Korean KOSPI sank 1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index lost 1.3 percent.
Markets in Japan remained closed for a public holiday.
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