US equity markets advanced to lift the benchmark indices to their best weekly performance since the week ended 6 November 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data - Dow climbed for a fifth straight session, settling +274-points or +0.80% higher. Salesforce.com Inc and Apple Inc were among the top gainers in the Dow, rising +3.99% and +2.09% respectively The broader S&P500 gained +1.17%. Information Technology (up +2.19%) and Consumer Discretionary (+2.18%) both gained over >2% to lead ten of the eleven primary sectors higher. Utilities (down –0.90%) was the only primary sector to settle in the red on Friday (18 March). General Motors Co rose +0.4% in extended trading on Friday (18 March) after announcing that it was buying Softbank Vision Fund's stake in its autonomous-driving unit Cruise for US$2.1B, lifting its stake to ~80%. GM will also make an additional US$1.35B investment in Cruise in place of SoftBank, it said. The technology centric Nasdaq rallied +2.05%. Nvidia Corp rallied +6.8% and Meta Platforms Inc +4.16% The small capitalisation Russell 2000 added +1.02%. Friday’s (18 March) marked Quadruple Witching, the simultaneous expiration of stock index futures, stock index options, stock options and single-stock futures.
