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UNITED STATES (AP) - The stock market
closed out its worst week in more than two
months on Friday as a second straight day of
turbulent trading ended with more losses.
The S&P 500 fell 0.8 per cent, although
the index did claw most of the way back from
a 3.1 per cent skid earlier in the day.
A slide in technology stocks again did
much of the damage.
The two-day sell-off came after the S&P
500 set new highs earlier in the week and
had its best day in nearly two months. There
wasn’t a particular catalyst for continued
selling in the high-lying tech sector, but
analysts noted that those stocks had post-
ed gigantic gains so far this year that many
thought were overdone.
“We had a fast and furious rally at the end
of August and we’ve given it back,” said Head
of Institutional Equity Strategy at Stifel Barry
Bannister. “Investors are like a herd of gazelle
on the Serengeti; it doesn’t takemuch to spook
them. They’re alarmed and on the move.”
The selling followed a Labor Department
report showing that United States (US) hiring
slowed to 1.4 million last month, the fewest
jobs added since the economy started bounc-
ing back from the initial shock of the pandem-
ic, even as the nation’s unemployment rate
improved to 8.4 per cent from 10.2 per cent.
The US economy has recovered about half the
22 million jobs lost to the pandemic.
The S&P 500 fell 28.10 points to 3,426.96.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 159.42
points, or 0.6 per cent, to 28,133.31. The index
had swung sharply during the day, between a
loss of as much as 628 points and a gain of as
much as 247.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq dropped
144.97 points, or 1.3 per cent, to 11,313.13. The
slide added to the index’s ive per cent skid
from the day before.
The VIX, a gauge of how much volatility
investors expect in the market, has been ris-
ing. Even so, traders were not shifting funds
into traditional safe-haven assets like US gov-
ernment bonds and precious metals, a sign
that the sell-off was not necessarily a reac-
tion to jitters about the economy.
“A lot of people were piling into the (tech)
trade and there are a lot of gains to be made,”
said Stephanie Roth, portfolio macro analyst
at JP Morgan Private Bank. “This is more an in-
stance of proit-taking, rather than true panic.”
She noted it’s not unusual for traders to
pocket recent gains ahead of a holiday week-
end. US markets will be closed tomorrow for
Labor Day.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 0.72 per
cent, up from 0.62 per cent late Thursday, a big
move. The higher yields helped send inancial
stocks higher, since banks can lend money at
higher rates once yields rise in the bond mar-
ket. Capital One Financial rose 4.7 per cent.
Stocks claw back some of their losses in
another rocky day
Thursday’s sell-off followed a euphoric
rise in recent weeks led by big technology
stocks. Investors have been betting tech-
nology companies will keep making huge
proits as people spend even more time on-
line with their devices during the pandemic,
making new market darlings of companies
like Zoom Video Communications as many
Americans work remotely and students do
online learning.
Some of the tech high lyers racked up
more losses on Friday. Nvidia fell three per
cent, though the chipmaker is still up more
than twofold this year.
Apple was down for much of the day be-
fore ending with only a 0.1 per cent gain, Ama-
zon dropped 2.2 per cent and Zoom fell three
per cent. And yet, Apple is still up 64.8 per cent
this year, while Amazon is up 78.3 per cent. And
Zoom is up more than 443 per cent for the year.
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping
pledged to open China’s service industries
wider to foreign competitors as its irst in-per-
son trade fair since the coronavirus outbreak
opened under intensive anti-disease controls.
Xi gave no details in his speech on Friday
night, but Chinese leaders are emphasis-
ing development of tourism, retailing and
other services.
They are part of a campaign to nurture
economic growth driven by consumer spend-
ing instead of exports and investment.
China will “relax market access for ser-
vice industries” and “actively expand imports
of high-quality services,” Xi said at the China
International Fair for Trade in Services.
Xi appeared on a video screen before Chi-
nese businesspeople and a handful of foreign
VIPs who wore masks and sat in widely spaced
chairs at a convention centre adjacent to the
site of the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Most exhibitors from abroad are participat-
ing via the Internet because Beijing has yet to
relax curbs that bar most foreign visitors from
the country.
The annual export-oriented Canton Trade
Fair in southern China, the world’s biggest
sales event, was held online in June.
China’s manufacturers are lexible, ef-
icient global competitors, but its ledgling
tourism, inance, healthcare and other service
industries lag their Western counterparts.
Regulatory barriers limit the ability of foreign
banks and other providers to compete in Chi-
na two decades after Beijing joined the free-
trading World Trade Organization (WTO).
United States (US) oficials who are wag-
ing a tariff war with Beijing over its trade re-
cord point to services, in which the US runs a
surplus with China, as a promising area.
Organisers said 18,000 companies and
100,000 people from 148 countries and re-
gions signed up to take part in the trade fair,
which runs through Wednesday.
China, where the pandemic began last De-
cember, was the irst economy to shut down
and the irst to begin the struggle to revive
business after the ruling party declared victo-
ry over the disease in March. Factories, ofice
towers and shopping malls have reopened but
visitors to public buildings in Beijing still are
checked for fever by masked guards.
China became the irst economy to return
to growth with a 3.2 per cent expansion over
a year earlier in the three months ending in
June, rebounding from the previous quarter’s
6.8 per cent contraction.
The trade fair has three-dimensional tech-
nology for foreign vendors to show goods
and secure online communications to talk to
customers, the director of the Beijing Munici-
pal Bureau of Commerce, Yan Ligang, told
reporters on Thursday.
Guests and staff must wear masks and
will be checked throughout the day for fever,
according to Yan.
China’s Xi promises more market
opening at trade fair
STOCKHOLM (CNA) - IKEA’s shopping cen-
tres business has made its irst United States
(US) real estate acquisition, buying the 6X6
mall in San Francisco, after telling
Reuters
in
May it was engaged in several negotiations
for inner-city acquisitions in the US.
It bought the 6X6 mall from Alexandria
Real Estate Equities Inc and TMG Partners,
an Ingka Centres spokesman said.
“We will be sharing details of our ex-
citing plans for the 6x6 property, where
IKEA Retail US will play an integral role, in
the near future,” the company said in an
emailed statement.
Ingka Centres is one of the world’s big-
gest mall owners, with 45 across Europe,
Russia and China, each anchored by an
IKEA store. With the furniture retailer, it is
shifting its focus towards city-centre from
out-of-town locations.
It said in May that locations in New York,
Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago
were high on its wish list.
Ingka Centres, a division of Ingka Group
which owns most IKEA stores worldwide,
had a leasable area of four million square-
metres globally and 480 million individual
visits in the year through August 2019.
In the US, it will be taking on mall giants
such as Simon Property Group, General
Growth Properties and Westield .
In January, it made its irst acquisition of
an existing mall location, buying Kings Mall
in London.
IKEA’s shopping centres arm buys San Francisco
mall in its first US real estate deal
A woman walks outside Ikea store in the south-west of Stockholm. PHOTO: AFP
A nearly empty Times Square in New York City. PHOTO: AFP