Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index on Friday ended higher in a choppy trading session, as gains in defensive shares overshadowed energy declines, and investors shrugged off hawkish comments from US Federal Reserve officials about interest rate hikes.
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Susan Collins said that, with little evidence price pressures are waning, the Fed might need to deliver another 75 basis-point rate hike as it seeks to get inflation under control.
On Thursday, St Louis Fed President James Bullard set off equity declines when he said that the Fed needs to keep raising interest rates given that its tightening so far “had only limited effects on observed inflation.”
Photo: AFP
With Collins and then Bullard “we have had some very hawkish talk, but the market has really taken it in stride,” Trust Advisory Services cochief investment officer Keith Lerner said. “It hasn’t hit the market to the downside like it has in the past.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 199.37 points, or 0.59 percent, to 33,745.69, the S&P 500 gained 18.78 points, or 0.48 percent, to 3,965.34 and the NASDAQ Composite added 1.1 points, or 0.01 percent, to 11,146.06.
For the week, the S&P 500 fell 0.69 percent, retreating modestly after a month-long rally spurred by softer-than-expected inflation data that sparked hopes the central bank could temper its market-punishing rate hikes.
The NASDAQ fell 1.6 percent for the week, while the Dow was basically unchanged, dipping 0.01 percent.
“Markets are in a bit of a holding pattern” ahead of employment and other economic data, New York Life Investments economist and portfolio strategist Lauren Goodwin said.
“What is driving all equities of course is Fed policy and the gravitational force that rising interest rates have on the equity complex as a whole,” Goodwin said. “We are not likely to see any real evidence in terms of potentially declining wage pressure or inflation pressure for another couple of weeks.”
Defensive groups led the way among S&P 500 sectors, with utilities up 2 percent, real estate rising 1.3 percent and healthcare 1.2 percent higher.
The energy sector fell 0.9 percent, as oil prices dropped, stemming from concern about weakened demand in China and further increases to US interest rates.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.54-to-1 ratio; on the NASDAQ, a 1.13-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted eight new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the NASDAQ Composite recorded 62 new highs and 141 new lows.
About 9.7 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, compared with the 12 billion daily average over the past 20 sessions.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts