Stocks in Europe dropped from a two-month high amid investor concern that the latest European Central Bank (ECB) stimulus measures were not enough to spur an economic recovery.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index fell 0.4 percent to 347.57 at the close of trading on Friday, trimming its fourth weekly advance to 1.6 percent. The gauge pared losses of as much as 0.7 percent after a US jobs report. The index jumped 1.1 percent on Thursday after the ECB unexpectedly cut its three main interest rates and announced a program to buy securities.
“Markets are weak today [Friday] as investors doubt the measures announced yesterday [Thursday] will produce growth, improve jobs or increase inflation,” Daniel Weston, a portfolio manager at Aimed Capital GmbH in Munich, wrote in an e-mail.
US employers hired the fewest workers this year last month, fueling confidence that the US Federal Reserve would not raise rates sooner than expected. Payrolls increased by 142,000, fewer than the lowest estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, figures from the US Labor Department showed. The unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent in July as people left the workforce.
In Europe, ECB President Mario Draghi is struggling to boost inflation that is running at a fraction of the bank’s goal against a backdrop of near-record unemployment.
The euro-area’s economic recovery ground to a halt in the second quarter, as investment slid for the first time since the start of last year, according to data published on Friday. GDP in the three months through June was unchanged from the first quarter, when it increased 0.2 percent, the EU’s statistics office in Luxembourg said. That confirmed Eurostat’s Aug. 14 estimate.
National benchmark indices slid in 12 of the 18 western European markets on Friday. France’s CAC 40 Index lost 0.2 percent and the UK’s FTSE 100 Index dropped 0.3 percent, while Germany’s DAX Index added 0.2 percent.
The volume of STOXX 600 shares changing hands on Friday was 8.9 percent higher than the 30-day average, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
A gauge of commodity producers retreated the most of 19 industry groups on the STOXX 600. Fresnillo PLC dropped 4.6 percent to ￡8.68 and Randgold Resources Ltd declined 4.1 percent to ￡47.37.
London Stock Exchange Group PLC slipped 2.2 percent to ￡20.40 after Borse Dubai Ltd sold a 3.1 percent stake in the UK bourse.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS