Wall Street faces another week of earnings reports on the upbeat after a wave of bright corporate news dissipated some of the gloom from the ongoing financial turmoil.
“A sense that the worst may be over on the credit crisis front is gradually rolling over the market, with equities cheering generally better-than-expected results for non-financials this week, and looking beyond further write-downs among major US banks,” said Douglas Porter, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets
During the week, solid quarterly results from multinationals such as Google, IBM, Intel, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar and Honeywell, have eased concerns about bottom lines in the credit squeeze.
“What a difference a week makes,” Briefing.com’s Patrick O’Hare said.
“Last Friday the market was bemoaning a very disappointing earnings report from General Electric and fearing the worst in front of this week’s busy earnings reporting period. This Friday it exits the week in an upbeat mood, basking in a sense of relief that this week’s earnings reports and economic data were better than feared,” he said.
In the week to Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 4.25 percent to 12,849.36 while the Standard & Poor’s 500 broad-market index climbed 4.31 percent to 1,390.33.
The tech-dominated NASDAQ composite advanced 4.92 percent to 2,402.97.
Bonds weakened as investors looked to equities. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose to 3.743 percent on Friday from 3.471 percent a week earlier, and that on the 30-year bond climbed to 4.517 percent from 4.302 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
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