NEW YORK, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Wall Street's major averages posted mixed results in the busy week featuring a big wave of earnings reports, a key announcement from the Federal Reserve, and a slew of economic data.

For the week ending Friday, the Dow fell 0.5 percent, the S&P 500 eked out a gain of 0.2 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.4 percent.

The S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index, which is designed to track the performance of the 50 largest Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges by total market cap, logged a weekly loss of 2.4 percent.

About a third of the S&P 500 companies reported this week, including quarterly earnings results from big tech names.

Google-parent Alphabet on Tuesday reported first-quarter results that easily beat expectation, prompting some Wall Street analysts to lift their price targets on the stock.

Apple on Wednesday announced financial results for its fiscal 2021 second quarter with a March quarter record revenue of 89.6 billion U.S. dollars, up 54 percent year over year.

Amazon on late Thursday announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2021, with net sales of 108.5 billion U.S. dollars, up 44 percent year over year.

Microsoft and Facebook also reported stronger-than-expected earnings.

Social-media platform Twitter, however, reported user growth numbers and second-quarter revenue guidance that fell short of market expectations.

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept its benchmark interest rates unchanged at the record-low level of near zero, as economic recovery gathers momentum on COVID-19 vaccination progress and strong fiscal support.

"Amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened," the Fed said in a statement after concluding its two-day policy meeting.

The Fed also acknowledged that U.S. inflation had risen, but reiterated this "largely" reflected "transitory factors."

Jerome Powell, in his Fed Chair Press Conference, said that the economic recovery was happening faster than expected, but acknowledged the unevenness. He said that "it is not time yet" to talk about tapering the Fed's asset purchase program, as it will "take some time before we see substantial further progress" toward the central bank's employment and inflation goals.

On the data front, the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in the first quarter of 2021, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Thursday.

"The increase in first quarter GDP (gross domestic product) reflected the continued economic recovery, reopening of establishments, and continued government response related to the COVID-19 pandemic," the department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said in the "advance" estimate.

U.S. initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, registered 553,000 in the week ending April 24, a decrease of 13,000 from the prior week's revised level, the Department of Labor said on Thursday. The reading was higher than the 528,000 estimate issued by Dow Jones.

"There is an interesting dynamic happening in the current environment, in my view: economic risks are falling, while market risks are rising," Mitch Zacks, CEO at Zacks Investment Management, said in a note on Saturday, adding he was "seeing a lot of froth in particular asset classes and some individual stocks."

"Many investors are abandoning long-term, diversified approaches in favor of chasing 'hot' asset classes or stocks. That's bad news," he said. Enditem

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)