The main indices on Wall Street opened higher yesterday, prompting the Dow Jones index to record gains for the tenth day in a row, while major companies and technology stocks began to recover after incurring sharp losses in the previous session.
According to “”, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 49.14 points, or 0.14 percent, at the opening, to 35,274.32 points.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index opened up 15.29 points, or 0.34 percent, to 4,550.16 points, and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 84.87 points, or 0.60 percent, to 14,148.18 points at the open.
Roper Technologies rose 3.5 percent during trading yesterday, to achieve one of the biggest gains in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, after it recorded better profits and returns during the spring than analysts expected.
The company, which is looking to dominate the niche technology markets, also raised its full-year financial forecast.
The earnings reporting season is gaining momentum, with the majority of companies reporting better-than-expected results.
On the losing side on Wall Street was American Express, which fell 3.6 per cent. It reported stronger earnings during the spring than expected, but its revenue fell short of expectations.
The stock market has generally been in a state of uncertainty this year, as the economy has defied expectations of a recession.
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates Wednesday to the highest level since 2001, but the hope is that this will be the final increase of the cycle because inflation has been subsiding since last summer.
Sure enough, the more than 18 per cent jump for the S&P 500 this year has pundits saying the rally has come too far, too quickly.
The risk of recession remains because inflation and interest rates are also still high.
Much of the market’s gains this year have also been due to a small handful of stocks, particularly those benefiting from the Wall Street craze over AI technology.
For example, “Nvidia” has tripled.
Much of Wall Street’s gain was led by seven stocks in particular, a group that has become known as the “Magnificent Seven”: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.
Their big gains mean they collectively trade with share prices that are 44 times higher than their earnings per share over the past 12 months, according to Savita Subramanian, equity analyst at Bank of America.
This is an expensive level compared to history, but other stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index are trading at 17 times more reasonable profits, according to “French”.
In Europe, European stocks rose yesterday to end the week’s trading on the upside, while German stocks closed lower as SAP’s revenue expectations affected the technology sector, which also recorded its biggest weekly decline this year. Shares of software company SAP fell 4.2 percent after the company cut its full-year forecast, sending Germany’s DAX index down 0.2 percent.
The European Stoxx 600 index rose 0.3 percent at the close, extending its gains for the fourth consecutive session.
The technology sector index in Europe fell 0.4 percent, to be the biggest loser among the main sectors this week, with a decrease of 4.8 percent. The decline in technology stocks, due to the pessimistic forecasts of the software company SAP, squandered the gains of energy companies, which track the impact of high oil prices.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 rose 0.9 percent this week, boosted by a rally in British stocks after evidence of slowing domestic inflation emerged.
London’s FTSE 100 rose 3 percent this week, its best level in nearly four months.
In Asia, the Japanese Nikkei index ended yesterday’s trading lower, affected by the acceleration of declines in stocks related to chips, which track the impact of their counterparts in the United States.
Semiconductor industry giants Tokyo Electron and Advantest fell 5.6 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively, wiping nearly 200 points from the Nikkei index.
The Nikkei index fell 186 points, or 0.57 percent, to 32,304.25 points.
In contrast, the broader Topix index, which does not focus much on technology stocks, rose 0.06 percent.
Screen Holdings, a maker of chip components, and Renesas Electronics, a maker of chips, fell 4.9 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
This comes after the Philadelphia Semiconductor index fell 3.6 percent last night, in the worst daily performance this year.
The large losses incurred by chip stocks yesterday erased the impact of the rise in automaker Nidec, which rose 10.4 percent on the back of positive data.
Energy stocks were the best performers, and its sub-index rose 1.4 percent, supported by higher crude oil prices.
In Pakistan, the index of the Karachi Stock Exchange, the largest Pakistani stock market, closed today, up by 1.15 percent, equivalent to 522 points, to reach the level of 45,920 points.
The volume of traded shares amounted to 205,835,373 shares, representing the shares of 338 companies, of which the value of shares of 197 companies increased, while the value of shares of 120 companies declined, and the value of shares of 21 companies remained stable.
In Jordan, the general price index for stocks listed on the Jordanian Stock Exchange increased by 1.17 percent, to end the week’s trading at 2484.5 points.
The average daily trading volume on the ASE during the past week amounted to about 5.5 million Jordanian dinars, compared to 5.4 million Jordanian dinars in the previous week, an increase of 2.8 percent, while the total weekly trading volume amounted to about 22.2 million Jordanian dinars, compared to 27.0 million dinars the previous week. As for the number of traded shares recorded by the Stock Exchange during the past week, it amounted to 14.0 million shares, executed through 10,979 transactions.
