Wall Street enters the first trading week of the year on a bullish note, but the market remains dogged by concerns on the timing of any interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve amid economy recovery.
The US central bank may shed some light on how the central bank will unwind its unconventional monetary policy that helped jolt the world’s largest economy from prolonged recession.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to speak to the American Economic Association forum in Atlanta tiday, while the minutes of the Dec. 15-16 Fed policy-making body meeting will be released on Wednesday.
They could provide more detailed clues on the Fed’s updated outlook for the economy and evolving plans for an eventual “exit” strategy from virtually zero interest rates, with the market flush with liquidity.
“We still expect the Fed to stick to its guns on the current low-interest policy through at least the first half of 2010,” said IHS Global Insight US economists Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault in a joint report.
They cited both inflation and output, which were “running below the Fed’s target,” as well as tight credit conditions and constrained demand for credit.
Wall Street stocks slumped at the close of a turbulent year on Thursday, after positive jobs data sparked concerns that interest rates may rise sooner than anticipated.
However, shares settled only slightly below their 52-week highs with strong gains for the year.
For the holiday-shortened week, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.9 percent to 10,428.05, but gained 18.82 percent over the course of the year.
The technology-rich NASDAQ composite shed 0.7 percent for the week to 2,269.15 and the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index retreated 1 percent to 1,115.10.
The NASDAQ index racked up the largest percentage gain for the year, wrapping up the year with a 43.9 percent jump, while the S&P 500 index jumped 23.5 percent.
Analysts are confident the market will continue its ascent, considering the 2.2 percent US economic growth chalked up in the July-September period — the first quarter of recovery after a year of contraction — as well as rising existing-home sales and durable-goods orders.
For the week, bonds were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose to 3.843 percent from 3.807 percent a week earlier while that on the 30-year bond dipped to 4.641 percent from 4.687 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Suspected Chinese spies posing as Taiwanese tourists have been arrested for allegedly taking photographs of Philippine Coast Guard ships, local media reported. The suspected spies stayed at a resort in Palawan, where from a secluded location they used their phones to record coast guard ships entering and leaving a base, Philippine TV network GMA said on Wednesday. Palawan is near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise between China and the Philippines. The suspects allegedly also used drones without permission and installed cameras on coconut trees in the
RSS