Stocks tumbled for the second-straight day Friday as a weaker-than-expected jobs report and a dismal forecast from Amazon added to investor fears of a more substantial slowdown for the U.S. economy. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0Dow Jones Industrial Average\u00a0closed down 611 points, or 1.5%. The\u00a0S&P 500\u00a0dropped 1.8%, while the\u00a0Nasdaq Composite\u00a0lost 2.4%.<\/p>\n
Early Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. added just 114,000 jobs in July \u2014 well below the 185,000 expected and down significantly from 206,000 in June. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%, from 4.1% \u2014 its fourth-straight monthly increase and its highest level since October 2021. <\/p>\n
The market was already primed for losses as it opened following a negative quarterly earnings report from Amazon late Thursday. The e-commerce giant said customers were \u2018continuing to be cautious in their spending\u2019 amid a thinner financial cushion and the continued impact of higher prices. <\/p>\n
The bad data kept rolling in as Friday wore on: The Commerce Department\u2019s Census Bureau reported factory orders fell 3.3% in June, the biggest decline since April 2020 at the outset of the pandemic. <\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s sell-off pushed the Nasdaq index, which represents tech stocks, into correction territory, meaning it is now down more than 10% from an all-time high, set just a month ago. <\/p>\n
Leading Friday\u2019s pullback in stocks was Intel, which cratered 26% after announcing\u00a0weak guidance\u00a0and layoffs. Other big names seeing large declines included Prudential financial group, down 10% Booking.com, down 9%. Amazon also fell 9%. <\/p>\n
In response to the ugly economic news, traders bought up U.S. Treasuries, which are seen as a safe-haven asset. That pushed the yield on the 10-year note down to about 3.79%, its lowest level since December 2023. <\/p>\n
While the lower yield reflects economic distress, it was somewhat of a boon for homebuyers as mortgage rates, which track the 10-year yield, fell to 6.4%, their lowest level in more than a year. <\/p>\n
Friday represented the market\u2019s second-consecutive day of major declines. A day earlier, stocks saw heavy losses as they responded to other weaker-than-expected data, including a disappointing manufacturing output report and surprisingly high initial jobless claims.<\/p>\n
Following Friday\u2019s jobs report, many traders penciled in a 0.5% cut to the Federal Reserve\u2019s key federal funds rate for the Fed\u2019s next meeting in September. <\/p>\n
The Fed usually acts in 0.25% increments \u2014 so by making a 0.5% cut, a growing chorus on Wall Street is betting that the Fed will be playing catch up by the time its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which sets interest rates, meets again. <\/p>\n
Earlier in the week, the FOMC announced it was keeping the fed funds rate at its current level of about 5.5% in order to continue to put pressure on inflation.<\/p>\n
Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist and the namesake of an economic rule that has predicted past recessions and which is now close to being triggered, said that while the new data are alarming, a true downturn is not yet inevitable. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not in a recession now \u2014 contrary [to] the historical signal from the Sahm rule \u2014 but the momentum is in that direction,\u201d Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors, said via email. \u201cA recession is not inevitable and there is substantial scope to reduce interest rates.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Stocks tumbled for the second-straight day Friday as a weaker-than-expected jobs report and a dismal forecast from Amazon added to investor fears of a more substantial slowdown for the U.S. economy. The\u00a0Dow Jones Industrial Average\u00a0closed down 611 points, or 1.5%. The\u00a0S&P 500\u00a0dropped 1.8%, while the\u00a0Nasdaq Composite\u00a0lost 2.4%. Early Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}