Wall Street capped a day of volatile trading with a late-afternoon buying spree that sent US stock indices to a mostly higher finish on Friday.
Despite the eleventh-hour rally, the benchmark S&P 500 index ended with its second weekly loss in four weeks.
The market got a brief boost after US President Donald Trump expressed optimism that the US and China will reach a deal to resolve their costly trade dispute.
The remarks came as representatives of both countries have resumed talks.
Large retailers and media and communications companies were the laggards.
“The market and market participants are more unsettled now than they have been in years,” Globalt Investments senior portfolio manager Tom Martin said. “We’re that much further on in the cycle and you have these tariffs and trade wars that are really still in the very early stages.”
The S&P 500 index on Friday rose 6.07 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,736.27. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 123.95 points, or 0.5 percent, to 25,413.22. The NASDAQ composite slid 11.16 points, or 0.2 percent, to 7,247.87. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies picked up 3.41 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,527.53.
The S&P 500, which finished higher for the second straight day, ended the week with a loss of 1.6 percent, the Dow Jones fell 2.2 percent and the NASDAQ composite fell 2.15 percent.
Like much of this week, the market spent much of Friday veering between bouts of listless trading and modest swings.
“Investors are really trying to figure out how they want to be positioned based on the incoming information,” Martin said. “It’s not surprising to me that at this time of year, given what we’ve seen, that we’re getting the intraday moves we’re getting.”
One of the day’s market swings came as traders reacted to Trump’s remarks on trade.
At the White House, speaking about the lingering trade dispute, the US president said he hoped the US could make a deal with China.
“I think a deal will be made,” Trump said. “We’ll find out very soon.”
Stocks snapped higher after the remarks were reported, with the Dow briefly jumping as much as 220 points, before pulling back to about where they were beforehand.
Soybean futures spiked after Trump’s comments. Soybean prices have fallen sharply since this spring as the trade dispute with China led to a steep drop in China’s purchases of US soybeans.
Soybean futures jumped from US$8.83 to US$8.92 a bushel following the comments.
They had traded as high as US$10.78 a bushel in early March.
The Trump administration has imposed a 10 percent tariff on US$200 billion of Chinese goods over complaints that Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology as the price of market access.
That tariff is set to rise to 25 percent on Jan. 1. Another US$50 billion of Chinese goods already is subject to 25 percent duties.
Beijing has responded with duties on US$110 billion of US goods.
Washington and Beijing resumed talks over their spiraling trade dispute this week ahead of a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Trump, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.
Healthcare stocks were among the biggest gainers on Friday. Universal Health Services Inc gained 3.9 percent to US$133.
Troubled California power provider Pacific Gas & Electric Co surged 37.5 percent to US$24.40 after the US president of the utility’s state regulator said it was essential for a power company to have the financial strength to operate safely.
The remark late Thursday by California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Picker appeared to reassure investors who are concerned that the company might face a torrent of costs related to the devastating wildfire in Northern California.
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