Encouraging company earnings have propelled Wall Street stocks to their best levels in a month, but concerns over a slowing economy are expected to continue dogging markets.
Over the week, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 3.2 percent to end Friday at 10,424.62 ?a feat accomplished only once since April 30.
The tech-rich NASDAQ composite index soared 4.2 percent to 2,269.47 while the S&P 500 index, a broad measure of the markets, scaled 3.5 percent to 1,102.66, finishing atop the 1,100 level for the first time since June 21.
?ot a bad way to end the week,?Schaeffer? Investment Research senior technical strategist Ryan Detrick said.
?e saw some more encouraging earnings, and it was another step in the right direction?for an upward-trending bull market, he added.
The gains were chalked up on impressive earnings by key US companies, including construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, IT behemoths Microsoft and Apple, automaker Ford and banking giant Morgan Stanley.
Against the positive earnings, conglomerate General Electric also announced a 20 percent quarterly dividend jump.
?ased on the second-quarter earnings reports and guidance, the US is not headed for a double-dip recession,?said analyst Patrick O?are at Briefing.com, assuaging concerns over the pace of recovery in the world? largest economy.
?ur sense is that the biggest concern out there is that the US stock market is poised to suffer another large decline. It seems to us then that the biggest surprise at this juncture would be a melt-up in the stock market, not a meltdown,?O?are said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned this week that the US economy faced an ?nusually uncertain?outlook, saying the central bank could step in if the recovery fails.
Most recent government and private data pointed to a noticeable slowdown in economic activity.
?o questions lingered about the sustainability of the earnings momentum in the second half of 2010,?IHS Global Insight US 苟conomists Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault said in a report.
?he general expectation is that [economic] growth will slow down further in the third quarter,?they said.
The government is expected to provide the US GDP growth rate in the second quarter on Friday.
Most analysts expect the economy to grow by 2.5 percent in the April-June period from 2.7 percent in the first quarter.
Stuart Freeman, Wells Fargo chief equity strategist, said the economic slowdown was expected to be ?nly a temporary stumble?in the recovery, but added that many market participants were uncertain.
?he result of this uncertainty will likely be a continuation of the volatile day-to-day trading we have witnessed over the last few months,?he said.
PLA MANEUVERS: Although Beijing has yet to formally announce military drills, its coast guard vessels have been spotted near and around Taiwan since Friday The Taiwanese military is on high alert and is closely monitoring the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) air and naval deployments after Beijing yesterday reserved seven airspace areas east of its Zhejiang and Fujian provinces through Wednesday. Beijing’s action was perceived as a precursor to a potential third “Joint Sword” military exercise, which national security experts said the PLA could launch following President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visits to the nation’s three Pacific allies and stopovers in Hawaii and Guam last week. Unlike the Joint Sword military exercises in May and October, when Beijing provided detailed information about the affected areas, it
Five flights have been arranged to help nearly 2,000 Taiwanese tourists return home from Okinawa after being stranded due to cruise ship maintenance issues, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications announced yesterday. China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have arranged five flights with a total of 748 additional seats to transport 1,857 passengers from the MSC Bellissima back to Taiwan, the ministry said. The flights have been scheduled for yesterday and today by the Civil Aviation Administration, with the cruise operator covering all associated costs. The MSC Bellissima, carrying 4,341 passengers, departed from Keelung on Wednesday last week for Okinawa,
US president-elect Donald Trump said he would “never say” if Washington is committed to defending Taiwan from China, but “I would prefer that they do not do it [ an attack],” adding that he has a “good relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). “I never say because I have to negotiate things, right?” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker after saying he would not reveal his incoming administration’s stance on Taiwan’s defense in the event of an attack. Asked the question again, Trump, in a reference to China, said: “I would prefer that they
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: MOFA demanded Beijing stop its military intimidation and ‘irrational behavior’ that endanger peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region The Presidential Office yesterday called on China to stop all “provocative acts,” saying ongoing Chinese military activity in the nearby waters of Taiwan was a “blatant disruption” of the “status quo” of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Defense officials said they have detected Chinese ships since Monday, both off Taiwan and farther out along the first island chain. They described the formations as two walls designed to demonstrate that the waters belong to China. The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said it had detected 53 military aircraft operating around the nation over the past 24 hours, as well
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