The three major US stock indices rallied to record closing highs on Friday as financials and other economically focused sectors rebounded from a sell-off sparked by growth worries earlier in the week.
The rally allowed the indices to notch slight gains for the week, which also saw a sharp rally in US Treasuries as investors worried the US economic recovery might be losing steam as the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 spread globally.
US 10-year Treasury notes fell on Friday, halting an eight-day price rise, while the S&P 500 financials sector jumped 2.9 percent in the sector’s biggest daily percentage gain since March 1.
Financials led sector advances followed by energy, materials and industrials. Big banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, are to begin the second-quarter earnings season next week when they report results.
“What an about-face from all of the gloom and doom from yesterday,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“The US is in a bubble compared to the rest of the world, in a break from COVID. How long that’s going to last we don’t know,” he said, but “until that narrative changes, this is a market with a lot of free money and low interest rates.”
Photo: AP
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday rose 448.23 points, or 1.3 percent, to 34,870.16, the S&P 500 gained 48.73 points, or 1.13 percent, to 4,369.55 and the NASDAQ Composite added 142.13 points, or 0.98 percent, to 14,701.92.
For the week, the Dow rose 0.2 percent, and the S&P 500 and NASDAQ each added 0.4 percent.
A big jump in quarterly earnings is expected to mark a peak for US profit growth in the recovery from last year’s COVID-19 pandemic-induced collapse. Investors are looking to US companies’ upcoming quarterly results and forecasts about the recovery in the second half of this year as some worry that the recent economic surge is already waning.
Analysts expect earnings growth of 65.8 percent for companies in the S&P 500 index in the quarter, up from a previous forecast of 54 percent growth at the start of the period, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Among individual stocks, Levi Strauss & Co rose 1.4 percent as it forecast a strong full-year profit after beating quarterly earnings estimates on improving demand across its markets for jeans, tops and jackets.
US-listed shares of Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc (滴滴) gained 7.3 percent after four sessions of losses, as it was recently hit by an investigation from China’s Internet watchdog.
Volume on US exchanges was 8.51 billion shares, compared with the 10.5 billion average for the full session over the past 20 trading days.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 3.77-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 3.33-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 44 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 60 new highs and 32 new lows.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
RSS