The tech-heavy NASDAQ index on Friday rallied in choppy trading, even as sentiment remained fragile after the index’s worst performance in four months the day before, as fears of rising inflation kept US bond yields near a one-year high.
The S&P 500 ended little changed, while the Dow closed lower after earlier dropping to a three-week low. However, the Dow still posted gains of nearly 4 percent for the month, as investors bought into cyclical companies set to benefit from an economic reopening.
The NASDAQ, which had its worst week since October last year, ended the month about 1 percent higher, while the S&P 500 posted a monthly gain of about 2.6 percent.
Photo: AP
Shares of Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc on Friday rose from 0.2 percent to 1.4 percent, but had their worst week in months due to a sharp rise in US Treasury yields.
The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield eased to 1.404 percent after jumping to 1.614 percent on Thursday, roiling stock markets. Wall Street’s fear gauge hovered at a one-month high.
Tech stocks are particularly sensitive to rising yields because their value rests heavily on future earnings, which are discounted more deeply when interest rates go up.
“There’s no question that the path in rates today is higher,” 6 Meridian chief investment officer Andrew Mies said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 469.64 points, or 1.50 percent, to 30,932.37, the S&P 500 lost 18.19 points, or 0.48 percent, to 3,811.15 and the NASDAQ Composite gained 72.91 points, or 0.56 percent, to 13,192.35.
For the week, the Dow dropped 1.78 percent, the S&P 500 declined 2.45 percent and the NASDAQ lost 4.92 percent.
Financials and energy shares, the best performing S&P 500 sectors this month, slipped 2 percent and 2.3 percent. Technology stocks rose 0.6 percent and semiconductor stocks advanced 2.3 percent.
“There are a few tailwinds for stocks that we shouldn’t lose sight of,” Mies said, citing US President Joe Biden’s US$1.9 trillion economic aid package before the US Congress.
The S&P 500 value index dropped 1.3 percent, while the growth index rose 0.3 percent in a reversal of this month’s trend.
An early surge in the shares of GameStop Corp fizzled and left the video game retailer’s stock down 6.4 percent on Friday, throwing water on a renewed rally this week that has left analysts puzzled.
On the economic front, the latest data showed US consumer spending increased by the most in seven months last month, but price pressures remained muted.
Salesforce.com Inc dropped 6.3 percent as the online software company forecast full-year profit below market expectations.
Volume on US exchanges was 15.54 billion shares, compared with the 15.40 billion average for the full session over the past 20 trading days.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.56-to-1 ratio; on the NASDAQ, a 1.73-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted four new 52-week highs and one new low; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 54 new highs and 50 new lows.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six