Wall Street gained ground on Friday in a broad-based rally as investors were heartened by news that Washington would move to temporarily end the longest US government shutdown in history.
All three major US stock indices advanced, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ Composite eking out their fifth straight weekly gains.
However, the S&P 500 posted its first weekly loss of the year, snapping a four-week run.
The indices backed off their highs after US President Donald Trump confirmed that he and US lawmakers agreed to advance a three-week stop-gap spending plan to reopen the government.
Investor sentiment had faltered in the past few days in the face of revived jitters related to the shutdown and the prolonged US-China tariff spat.
“As some of these uncertainties in the market start to diminish we’ll get a clearer picture as to where things are headed,” said Charlie Ripley, senior market strategist for Allianz Investment Management in Minneapolis. “And today’s news of the ending of the government shutdown certainly alleviates some of that overhang.”
“But most likely some uncertainty will linger, as this is only a temporary measure to fund the government for now,” Ripley added.
Among these uncertainties, the ongoing trade dispute continues to worry investors.
With the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, nearing its conclusion, business leaders have expressed worries over the tariff battles, saying they are “fed up” with Trump’s policies.
An escalation of the trade dispute would sharpen the global economic slowdown already under way, according to a Reuters poll of hundreds of economists worldwide.
Fourth-quarter corporate earnings season is in high gear, with more than 22 percent of S&P 500 companies having reported. Of those, 72.3 percent have beaten analysts’ expectations.
Earnings on Friday were a mixed bag.
Starbucks Corp also surpassed Wall Street consensus, reporting better-than-anticipated quarterly sales. The coffee chain’s shares advanced 3.6 percent.
Consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive Co reported fourth-quarter revenue that surprised to the upside, but said it expects profit to decline this year. Its stock edged down 0.6 percent.
Intel Corp shares dropped 5.5 percent following the chipmaker’s disappointing fourth-quarter sales and current-quarter forecasts.
Still, the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index ended the session up 2.2 percent in the wake of a spate of positive earnings from other chipmakers.
DR Horton Inc’s quarterly results fell short of analysts’ expectations, underscoring persistent weakness in the US housing market. The homebuilder’s shares fell 2.6 percent.
Western Digital Corp also disappointed, but its closed 7.5 percent higher after providing an upbeat forecast and saying it was committed to paying dividends.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday rose 183.96 points, or 0.75 percent, to 24,737.2, the S&P 500 gained 22.43 points, or 0.85 percent, to 2,664.76 and the NASDAQ Composite added 91.40 points, or 1.29 percent, to 7,164.86.
For the week, the Dow added 0.1 percent, the S&P slipped 0.2 percent and the NASDAQ inched up 0.1 percent.
Advancing issues on Friday outnumbered declining ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 3.41-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 2.56-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 14 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 36 new highs and 20 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 7.55 billion shares, compared with the 7.79 billion average over the past 20 trading days.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained