European stocks posted their first weekly decline this month as Italian bonds fell after a debt auction, while concern mounted that political wrangling in Washington will lead to a US government shutdown.
Vallourec SA slumped 9.1 percent after the supplier of tubing to the oil and gas industry said that the weak Brazilian real will hurt its profits, while bookmaker Ladbrokes PLC fell 11 percent as it said the operating profit from its digital division will fall short of analysts’ estimates.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Telekom Austria AG rose 11 percent as a gauge of telecom shares posted the biggest gain by an industry group on the STOXX Europe 600 Index.
The STOXX 600 retreated 0.6 percent to 312.18 this week, but the equity benchmark has still climbed 5 percent this month and 9.5 percent this quarter as the US Federal Reserve unexpectedly refrained from reducing its monthly bond purchases at its last policy meeting.
The gauge has rallied 12 percent this year as the eurozone emerged from recession and central banks pledged to keep borrowing costs low to support their respective economies.
National benchmark indices declined in 14 of the 18 western European markets this week. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.4 percent, the UK’s FTSE 100 retreated 1.3 percent and Germany’s DAX slipped 0.2 percent as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party won the country’s general election on Sunday last week.
Meanwhile, Italy’s FTSE MIB Index slid 1.8 percent and bond yields jumped as borrowing costs climbed and demand fell at an auction of 10-year debt. The Italian Treasury sold 3 billion euros (US$4.1 billion) of securities maturing in 2024 at an average yield of 4.5 percent, more than the 4.46 percent yield at a previous auction on Aug. 29.
Italian stocks and bonds dropped on Thursday after former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies threatened to resign from parliament if the Italian Senate votes to expel him because of his conviction for tax fraud. The coalition government in Rome relies on Berlusconi’s People of Liberty Party to pass new laws.
As European markets closed on Friday, the US Congress had yet to approve a federal budget for the new financial year starting on Tuesday.
US lawmakers have to pass an emergency budget by Oct. 1 to keep the federal government operating and increase its debt ceiling as total borrowing approaches the US$16.7 trillion limit.
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
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.
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
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