Wall Street tumbled on Friday with more than 1,000 points knocked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average in two days as investors, increasingly nervous about a potential US trade war with China, shied away from risk ahead of the weekend and sought shelter from further losses.
In a volatile session, the S&P 500 came within a hair of its 200-day moving average, a key technical level. The benchmark index also nudged closer to its last month’s low, which marked a correction, ending 9.9 percent lower than its Jan. 26 record.
“There is concern what the trade war could look like. Investors want to manage their risk. If it escalates rapidly, it could be a major headwind for the market,” Global Markets Advisory Group senior market strategist Peter Kenny said in New York.
Photo: Reuters
US President Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs on up to US$60 billion in Chinese goods moved the world’s two largest economies closer to a trade war as China declared plans to levy duties on up to US$3 billion of US imports, including fruit and wine, even as it urged the US to “pull back from the brink.”
The Dow on Friday fell 424.69 points, or 1.77 percent, to 23,533.2, the S&P 500 lost 55.43 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,588.26 after hitting an intraday low that was barely above its 200-day moving average of 2585.22.
The NASDAQ Composite dropped 174.01 points, or 2.43 percent, to 6,992.67.
For the week, the Dow was down 5.67 percent, the S&P 500 was down 5.95 percent and the NASDAQ was down 6.54 percent, marking their biggest weekly percentage falls since January 2016.
The Dow was down 11.6 percent since its Jan. 26 high and hit its lowest close since confirming a correction last month.
The Cboe Volatility Index, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility in the S&P 500, finished up 1.53 points at 24.87, its highest close since Feb. 13.
The S&P’s financial sector was the S&P’s biggest percentage loser, at 3 percent, after a volatile session in which it was whip-sawed by volatile US Treasury yields.
Bloomberg News cited the Chinese ambassador to the US saying that the country is “looking at all options” in response to tariffs, which could include scaling back purchases of US Treasuries.
NASDAQ was weighed down by declines in momentum stocks, such as Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc.
The semiconductor sector took a fall after Micron Technology Inc’s quarterly report stoked fears about falling NAND prices.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index slumped 3.3 percent.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 3.96-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 3.72-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted two new 52-week highs and 42 new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 23 new highs and 93 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 8.11 billion shares, above the 7.3 billion average for the past 20 trading days.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS