European stocks rose to their highest level in almost seven years amid speculation that the European Central Bank (ECB) will consider quantitative easing at its meeting next month, and as German factory orders and US payrolls beat forecasts.
The STOXX Europe 600 Index climbed 1.8 percent to 350.97 at the close of trading on Friday, as Germany’s DAX hit a record high.
The benchmark European gauge, which posted its fourth weekly advance, slid after ECB President Mario Draghi refrained from pledging stimulus for the eurozone at a meeting of the bank’s Governing Council. Draghi said the monetary authority will reassess the situation early next year.
The council expects to consider a proposal for broad-based asset purchases including sovereign debt at the next monetary policy meeting on Jan. 22, according to two eurozone central bank officials familiar with the deliberations.
“European markets are liquidity addicts at the moment,” Otto Waser, chief investment officer at R&A Research & Asset Management AG in Zurich, said by telephone. “You get rallies whenever somebody eases in the world.”
Germany factory orders, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, climbed 2.5 percent after a revised increase of 1.1 percent in September, data from the German Ministry of Economy showed on Friday. Economists had predicted a 0.5 percent increase.
Employers in the US added 321,000 jobs last month, beating forecasts for the biggest gain since January 2012, figures from the US Department of Labor showed on Friday. The jobless rate held at a six-year low of 5.8 percent.
“It’s a boom economy,” Mirabaud Securities LLP vice president John Plassard said. “Where is the crisis? The private sector is really strong. There is a seasonality factor, but those figures are incredible. The US economy is really on its way.”
National benchmark indices gained in 16 of the 18 western European markets, with Greece’s ASE Index rising 4.1 percent for the best performance. Germany’s DAX added 2.4 percent, while the UK’s FTSE 100 rose 1 percent.
Gauges of automakers, banks and telecommunications companies were among the biggest advancers of the 19 industry groups in the STOXX 600.
Daimler AG rose 3.6 percent, Volkswagen AG increased 3 percent and Peugeot SA added 3.2 percent.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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