Stock market today: Wall Street adds to weekly gains after cooler-than-expected jobs report
By Zimo Zhong And Matt Ott, The Associated Press on November 3, 2023.
NEW YORK (AP) – Wall Street’s best week this year is getting even better following a cooler-than-expected report on the job market. The S&P 500 was up 0.5% higher in early trading Friday. The Dow rose 176 points, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.5%. Stocks have surged this week on rising hopes the Federal Reserve is finally done with its market-crunching hikes to interest rates. Friday’s jobs report underscored that pressure is easing on inflation after it showed employers hired fewer workers last month than economists expected. Treasury yields tumbled, releasing more of the pressure that had built up on the stock market. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. Shares on Wall Street were essentially flat early Friday as markets peruse more corporate earnings ahead of the government’s monthly jobs report. Futures for the Dow were down less than 0.1% before the bell and futures for the S&P 500 inched up less than 0.1%. Markets rallied in recent days after comments by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggesting interest rates might not have to be raised further to keep inflation in check. Shares of Apple fell more than 2% in after hours trading after the iPhone maker posted another quarter of lagging sales. The slight revenue deterioration announced by the tech trendsetter Thursday for the July-September period marked the end of Apple’s fiscal year – a stretch that saw the company suffer a revenue decrease from the prior year in each quarter. Online travel company Expedia jumped more than 10% after it beat Wall Street’s third-quarter sales and profit targets and announced a new $5 billion share repurchase authorization. Coming before the opening bell is the Labor Department’s October jobs report, which is expected to show a slight downturn in hiring following September’s blockbuster report. Analysts are forecasting that private U.S. employers added 180,000 jobs in October, a healthy number but well short of the previous month’s 336,000 job gains. The U.S. labor market has shown remarkable resilience in the face of a parade of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve since March of 2022. Elsewhere, in Europe at midday Germany’s DAX gained 0.2% and the CAC 40 in Paris gave back 0.1%. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.2%. Asian markets also advanced. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 2.6% to 17,687.00, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.7% to 3,030.80. Tokyo markets were closed for a holiday. In China, a services industry survey showed a slight improvement in October, though retail sales hit its lowest level in 10 months. Similar surveys for the manufacturing sector released early this week showed more sluggish market conditions overall. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.1% to 6,978.20. South Korea’s Kospi surged 1.1% to 2,368.34. India’s Sensex was 0.6% higher and Bangkok’s SET rose 0.8%. Longer-term Treasury yields fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.65% early Friday from more than 5% last week, when it reached its highest level since 2007. Lower yields pump oxygen into financial markets. They make it easier for businesses and households to get loans, encourage investors to pay higher prices for stocks and reduce the pressure on the entire financial system. Also Friday, oil prices were steady after experiencing wild swings this week. A barrel of benchmark U.S. oil rose 72 cents to $83.18 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It added 90 cents on Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 56 cents to $87.41 per barrel. In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 150.19 Japanese yen from 150.44 yen. The euro cost $1.0649, up from $1.0620 late Thursday. The S&P 500 leaped 1.9% Thursday in its fourth straight winning day and is already up 4.9% this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1.7% and the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.8%. – 21-20
