US stock markets, beaten down by negative economic reports, will have a holiday-shortened week to regroup before the company earnings season gets underway.
Over the past week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 4.51 percent, closing on Friday at 9,686.48 points, its lowest level since Oct. 5.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index dropped 5.92 percent to 2,091.79 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a broad measure of the markets, slumped 5.03 percent to 1,022.58 points.
US markets will be closed tomorrow in observance of the Independence Day holiday.
Only one key economic report is due in the holiday-shortened week: the Institute for Supply Management’s index on activity in the services sector, on Tuesday.
The major market indices spent this week mired in red, under pressure from a slew of poor economic indicators.
“It was one ugly week, and the recent data raises serious questions about the overall state of the economy,” Ryan Detrick at Schaeffer’s Investment Research said.
The US Labor Department’s jobs report on Friday did not help to dampen recovery fears.
The economy shed 125,000 jobs, more than expected, while the unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent as more than a half million workers exited the workforce.
Most analysts had expected it to rise to 9.8 percent.
“The unemployment rate dropped because the labor force shrank even more rapidly as discouraged workers stopped looking for work,” analysts at Societe Generale said.
Patrick O’Hare, chief market analyst at Briefing.com, said that several indicators are flashing warning signs that an economic slowdown is on the way.
“We see a slowdown coming, but we do not see another recession,” he said. “The feeling of negativity in the market is palpable, which is why one needs to respect the possibility of a counter-trend rally of decent size in the near term that is fueled by short-covering activity.”
Lindsay Piegza at FTN Financial called last month “a pretty bad month.”
“We basically stalled. We’re not falling off a cliff but we slowed from the two previous months,” Piegza said.
The blue-chip Dow plunged 10 percent in the April-June period, the first quarterly decline since the indices rebounded from March last year’s lows.
“This does not bode well for starting out into the second half of the year. We’ve initiated a new trend,” Piegza added.
Investors will have the week to prepare for the unofficial start of earnings season on July 12, when Alcoa reports results.
“With corporate balance sheets — particularly stateside — in good shape and with dividend trends on the rise, opportunities for investors to be paid while they wait appear attractive,” John Stoltzfus of Ticonderoga Securities said.
“The message looks clear: Spare the party hats for now, keep the seat belts fastened, make shopping lists and keep an eye out for babies that’ve been and will continue to be thrown out with the bath water on down days,” Stoltzfus said.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS