US stocks on Friday held near the unchanged mark to close out a strong week as former US vice president Joe Biden edged closer to victory in the presidential election, while the monthly jobs report underscored the hurdles still facing the economy.
Biden built on narrow leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia, putting him on the verge of winning the White House, although US President Donald Trump has filed lawsuits in battleground states to contest the results.
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 66.78 points, or 0.24 percent, to 28,323.4, the S&P 500 lost 1.01 points, or 0.03 percent, to 3,509.44 and the NASDAQ Composite added 4.3 points, or 0.04 percent, to 11,895.23.
The three major indices notched their biggest weekly percentage gains since April as the prospect of policy gridlock in Washington eased worries a Biden administration might tighten regulations on US companies.
The Dow increased 6.87 percent, the S&P 500 rose 7.32 percent and the NASDAQ gained 9.01 percent.
“It’s not fairytale land, we don’t go up every day, so at some point you would think we would see a little bit of downward pressure,” said J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.
Control of the US Senate could hinge on four as-yet undecided races. If the Republicans retain their majority, they would likely block large parts of Biden’s legislative agenda, including expanding healthcare and fighting climate change.
“There is some concern with regards to if Biden creeps ahead or wins Georgia then there is [a] chance that those [Senate] seats will follow. That’s what people are reading into this,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at Stonex Group Inc in New York.
The government’s closely watched report showed that unemployment dropped sharply to 6.9 percent last month from 7.7 percent in September, but job recovery slowed as fiscal support waned and COVID-19 cases surged.
After the jobs report, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said economic statistics indicated that the US Congress should enact a smaller, highly targeted COVID-19 stimulus package.
The volume on US exchanges was 10.36 billion shares, compared with the 9.23 billion average for the full session over the past 20 trading days.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.41-to-1 ratio; on the NASDAQ, a 1.63-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 51 new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the NASDAQ Composite recorded 133 new highs and 32 new lows.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained