"Aleqtisadiah" from Riyadh
US stocks were hit by a sharp sell-off yesterday, as the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index pushed down about 2 per cent on weak factory data in the US and Europe, fueling investor fears of a global economic slowdown.
According to Reuters, the Dow Jones industrial average ended the day down 459.48 points, or 1.77 percent, at 25,503.03 points.
The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 54.17 points, or 1.90 percent, to close at 2,800.71.
The NASDAQ Composite Index closed down 196.29 points, or 2.5 percent, to 7,642.67 points.
The three indexes recorded the largest one-day loss in terms of percentage since January 3.
The three indexes also ended the week with losses as the Dow fell 1.34%, the S & P 0.77% and the Nasdaq 0.6%.
On the other hand, a well-informed source said that the intelligent transport services company "Uber Technologies" has chosen the New York Stock Exchange to offer its shares.
The IPO is expected to be one of the top five offerings on the New York Stock Exchange at all, according to "the German".
The Bloomberg news quoted the source that said that the company may submit an application for its shares to trade in April next to start the registration process, which can estimate the value of the company about 120 billion dollars in the largest IPO in a year.
According to Bloomberg data, the company will only need to put more than 16 per cent of its shares to be one of the top five IPOs on the US stock exchange.
By choosing the NYSE to trade its shares, Uber is moving away from its rival Lift, which has chosen Nasdaq Global Select Market to launch its shares next week.
Several US technology giants such as Google, Microsoft Corp. and Apple Corp. are listed on Nasdaq.
Since the entry of the social networking giant Facebook on the NASDAQ seven years ago, the New York Stock Exchange attracted many technology companies such as Alibaba Group from China, Twitter and Snapchat to register their shares.
Alibaba Group Holdings (NYSE: ALB) registered its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 with the initial public offering of the Chinese giant in New York at $ 25 billion.
Twitter launched its stock in 2013 and Snap, which has the social networking application Snapchat, floated its stock in 2017.
It is noteworthy that "Lift" and "Uber" submitted the secret documents of the initial public offering to the US Capital Market Authority on the same day last December, but Lift has since then been its biggest rival in the initial implementation process, where it intends to carry out the operation next week, while still in front of "Uber" several weeks before that step.
On the other hand, the company "Levi Strauss & Co" (Levaiz), an Icon of the US jeans industry, had a strong performance in the trading session of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, the first day after the return of trading on the company's shares, where its shares have risen by 30 per cent over the price of the initial public offering, according to "the German".
Founded in San Francisco about a century and a half ago, the giant American company, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, chose key executives for its initial stock offering and set the price at $ 17 on Wednesday.
After putting the shares on the first day, under the symbol "Levy," the share price rose to $ 22.41, which is raising the company's market capitalization to $ 8.7 billion, an increase of 31.8 percent.
Levaiz, founded by the German "Levi Strauss," has decided to re-issue its shares on the New York Stock Exchange after it left public stock markets in 1985.
European stocks rose yesterday to close near session lows, affected by fears of slowing global growth by following weak data for the manufacturing sector across Europe, which is fueled by weak economic data from the United States.
According to "Reuters", a survey published yesterday showed that the performance of companies in the euro area was much worse than expected this month with factory activity shrinking at the fastest pace in nearly six years affected by a sharp drop in demand.
After the session began to rise on optimism about extending the date of Britain's exit from the European Union, the STOXX 600 European index turned down for a third consecutive session to close down 1.2%.
The benchmark index ends the week with a 1.3 per cent loss, the largest this year.
London and Paris fell more than 2 per cent, while Frankfurt and Madrid were slightly better off with a 1.5% fall.
Almost all sectors in the STOXX 600 index closed lower, with the banking, automobile, industrial and chemical sectors falling by more than 2 per cent.
The banking sector posted its biggest one-day loss since early February.
On the other hand, Chinese sources said that 13 companies want to float on the first stock exchange specializing in technology stocks in China, which is a project that is an essential step to deepen the presence of China's financial markets, according to "the German."
According to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on its website that 13 companies have submitted applications to put public shares on the new stock exchange.
It noted that among these companies, nine companies indicated their request papers to seek to raise about 11 billion yuan ($ 1.6 billion) from the initial public offering of its shares on the stock exchange.
The Chinese authorities are seeking to speed up the establishment of the Science and Technological Innovation Council, which was announced by Chinese President "Xi Jinping" for the first-time last year.
China is expected to help stop Chinese technology companies from bidding on foreign exchanges.
The government policy is also aimed at increasing the contribution of the Chinese domestic capital market to the provision of financing sought by Chinese companies, rather than relying on loans from state-owned banks.
As for Asia, Japan's Nikkei closed almost flat yesterday, as the performance of chip stocks offset a weak financial and pharmaceutical industry, which fell after Isai said it would end its trials of an Alzheimer's drug.
The Nikkei index gained 0.1 percent to close at 1627.34 points, after fluctuating between highs and lows.
The index rose 0.8 per cent a week.
The broader TOPIX index was up 0.2 percent at 1,617.11 points.
The shares of chip manufacturing companies jumped on the rise in shares of US technology companies yesterday.
Advantest rose 6.2 percent and Tokyo Electron rose 5.2 percent.
Insurance stocks and banks, which seek high-yielding products such as US bonds, have fallen.
T & D Holdings fell 1.1 percent.
Dai-Aichi Life Holdings fell 1.2 percent and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group fell 0.5 percent.
The pharmaceutical sector also attracted attention, with 3 per cent falling and worst performing sectors in the market.
Essay's share plunged 17 per cent to the daily maximum of 7,565 yen after drugmaker and partner Peugeot said they were finishing two trials of their experimental drug Adocanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
The news has led to a drop in other pharmaceutical companies such as Astellas Pharmaceuticals,
Whose shares fell 3.5 per cent and Takeda Pharmaceuticals, whose share fell 0.7 per cent.
Peugeot shares fell nearly 30 per cent after the decision and posted $ 225.70, its biggest decline since February 2005.
