Stocks finished higher Friday as investors clawed back some of the previous session's steep late-day losses while picking through the details of a crucial March jobs report.
The Dow Jones Industrial gained 307 points, or 0.80%, to 38,904.04, while the S&P 500 rose 1.11% to 5,204.34 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed 1.24% to 16,248.52.
However, all three indexes posted a losing week, according to CNBC. The Dow slid 2.27%, posting its worst weekly performance in 2024. The S&P 500 declined 0.95% during the period, while the Nasdaq lost 0.8%.
The jobs market added 303,000 new hires last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. The headline unemployment rate slipped to 3.8%, the report noted, while the labor force participation rate rose to 62.7%.
“Today’s update on the health of the US labor market is a reaffirmation to investors that the US economy is chugging along at a solid pace and provides additional evidence that the economy has picked up steam since the end of last year,” said Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist for Allianz Investment Management.
Ripley said the data was yet another cue to Fed Chairman Powell and company "to re-conceptualize the idea of implementing three rate cuts this year as the economy continues to show resilience in this high policy rate environment."
"Furthermore, unless we see a material shift in the data over the next eight weeks, it would appear difficult for the Fed to find a reason to kick off a series of rate cuts as soon as the June meeting," he said.
Updated at 11:56 AM EDT
Hardly Spac-tacular
Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) shares hit a post-merger low of $41.36 in early Friday trading, extending their decline since the March 26 Nasdaq listing to around 37.5%, as investors continue to question the business model and revenue potential of its key asset, the Truth Social social media website co-founded by former President Donald Trump.
One of the great entrepreneurs & deal makers of our time on $djt: “it’s a scam” pic.twitter.com/mRt0Pj2jKH
— @jason (@Jason) April 5, 2024
Updated at 10:33 AM EDT
New York Quake
Reports of an earthquake in New York City, which included tremors felt in the New York Stock Exchange, which filtered through social media and elsewhere Friday, were confirmed by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.
The quake, measured at 5.5 on the Richter Scale, affected by the metropolitan New York area as well as parts of New Jersey. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at 4.8, with an epicenter near the town of Lebanon, New Jersey.
That was my first earthquake.
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) April 5, 2024
Everyone at the @NYSE just gave each other a big look.
Updated at 9:50 AM EDT
Of Goldilocks and bears ...
Stocks are off to a solid start, even with the concurrent rise in Treasury yields, as investors see the stronger-than-expected March job report, with muted wage gains, supporting the broader "soft-landing" thesis for the world's biggest economy.
The S&P 500 was marked 24 points, or 0.46% higher in the opening minutes of trading, while the Dow gained 75 points and the Nasdaq 95 points.
S&P 500 Opening Bell Heatmap (Apr. 05, 2024)$SPY +0.35% 🟩$QQQ +0.32% 🟩$DJI +0.23% 🟩$IWM +0.04% ⬜ pic.twitter.com/yRF4Vm53y4
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) April 5, 2024
Updated at 8:45 AM EDT
Feelin' hot, hot ... hot!
The red-hot jobs market added 303,000 new hires last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, with wage gains that, while accelerating, aren't rising far beyond Wall Street forecasts.
The headline unemployment rate slipped to 3.8%, the report noted, while the labor force participation rate rose to 62.7%, suggesting a greater number of Americans are re-entering the post-pandemic jobs market.
Stocks added to gains following the data release, with the S&P 500 called 24 points higher and the Dow looking at a 135 point opening bell gain.
Treasury yields were higher, too, however, with 10-year notes rising 6 basis points to 4.391% and 2-year notes rising 5 basis points to 4.704%.
Some sector highlights (prior month):
— Liz Ann Sonders (@LizAnnSonders) April 5, 2024
Private education, health +88k (+82k)
Government +71k (+63k)
Leisure/hospitality +49k (+43k)
Construction +39k (+26k)
Trade, transport +27k (+46k)
Retail +18k (+23k)
Professional/bus. services +7k (+17k)
Financial +3k (-6k)
Information 0…
Stock Market Today
Stocks ended sharply lower Thursday, with losses accelerating late in the session. The market move came as global crude prices surged and Treasury-bond yields pulled back due to concern about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
President Joe Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. could withdraw support for its efforts to shut down Hamas unless it promises to protect civilians on both sides of the conflict.
The warning came after an Israeli missile strike killed seven aid workers in Gaza who were delivering food parcels to Palestinians.
Brent crude futures prices jumped past $90 a barrel in late Thursday trading and held there in the overnight session, as traders grew increasingly concerned that the war could spread into a wider regional conflict.
The S&P 500 ended more than 64 points, or 1.23%, lower, its biggest single-day decline since February 13. The Dow gave back 530 points while the Nasdaq slumped 228 points, or 1.4%.
Markets were also rattled by comments from Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who does not have a vote on central-bank-rate policy this year but suggested he would nonetheless lobby against rate cuts.
Kashkari told Pensions and Investments magazine that "there's a lot of momentum in the economy right now" and that "if we continue to see inflation moving sideways, then that would make me question whether we need to do those rate cuts at all."
"What Kashkari did was deliver a cruel potential reality for the market: that inflation remains stubborn and the Fed, not wanting to repeat the policy errors of the 1970s, may be forced to retreat from suggesting a rate easing cycle," said LPL Financial's chief global strategist Quincy Krosby.
Still, even with that newly hawkish stance and other Fed colleagues' consistent messaging for "patience," benchmark Treasury-note yields moved lower in the session as investors sought flight-to-safety trades in the roiling markets.
The VIX index, a key volatility gauge, surged 15.9% to $16.62 in early Friday trading, the highest since early November and a level that suggests investors expect daily swings of as much as 55 points for the S&P 500 over the coming month.
Benchmark 10-year-note yields were last marked little changed at 4.331% heading into the start of the New York trading session, while 2-year notes were pegged at 2.658%..
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its global currency peers, was marked 0.14% higher at 104.264.
The Labor Department will publish its March jobs report reading at 8:30 am Eastern Time. Analysts are looking for a headline hiring gain of 205,000 and an unemployment rate steady at 3.9%.
Investors will also be closely tracking gains in average hourly earnings, which could stoke inflation concerns. That parsing follows data from payroll-processing group ADP earlier this week showing that job changers saw their pay deals rise 10%, more than double the rate of those remaining in their current roles.
"Fed Chair Powell has mentioned that a pace of [100,000] jobs would be about neutral for the economy, so they can still afford to be patient with rates with gains above that level," said Rob Swanke, senior equity strategist at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Mass.
Heading into the start of the trading day on Wall Street, futures contacts tied to the S&P 500 suggest a 19 point opening bell gain, while those linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average suggest a 100 point advance.
The tech-focused Nasdaq, meanwhile, is called 80 points higher with chip stocks such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) notching premarket gains following a robust profit update from Samsung.
The world's biggest chipmaker said it expects to see a tenfold increase in first-quarter earnings, even with revenue falling modestly shy of Wall Street forecasts, amid an improving chip market.
In overseas markets, Europe's Stoxx 600 slumped 1.09% in midday Frankfurt trading, while Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.98% in early London dealing.
Overnight in Asia, the regionwide MSCI ex-Japan index was marked 0.42% lower heading into the close of trading ahead of a series of weekend meetings between Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and senior Communist Party officials in Beijing.
Japan's Nikkei 225, meanwhile, closed 1.96% lower at 38,992.08 points as the yen remained pinned at a near 34-year low of 151.38 against the U.S. dollar.
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