NEW YORK (AP) – Amazon led United States (US) stock indexes higher on Friday, while a surprisingly weak jobs report marred by some unusual occurrences cemented bets on Wall Street for another cut to interest rates next week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent to recover some of its loss from the day before, which was its worst in eight weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 288 points, or 0.7 per cent, while the Nasdaq composite gained 0.8 per cent.
Amazon climbed 6.2 per cent after delivering a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected and was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 higher.
Intel, meanwhile, rallied 7.8 per cent despite reporting a worse loss than expected. Its revenue topped analysts’ estimates, and it gave a forecast for results in the current quarter that likewise topped expectations. Cardinal Health was another one of the market’s bigger gainers and jumped seven per cent after topping analysts’ forecasts for profit and revenue in the latest quarter. It also raised its profit forecast for its fiscal year, which is only in its second quarter.
They helped offset a 1.2 per cent slide for Apple, which said it expects revenue growth in the important holiday quarter to be in the low to mid-single digit percentages. That was below several analysts’ forecasts.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 23.35 points to 5,728.80. The Dow gained 288.73 to 42,052.19, and the Nasdaq composite added 144.77 to 18,239.92.
In the bond market, Treasury yields pushed higher following some swings after a highly anticipated report said US employers added only a net 12,000 workers to their payrolls last month. That was far short of the 115,000 in hiring that economists were expecting or the 223,00 jobs that employers created in September.
The nearly unanimous expectation on Wall Street remains for the Federal Reserve (Fed) to cut its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point next week. But the weaker-than-expected jobs report wiped out the slim chance traders had been seeing of the Fed holding rates steady, according to data from CME Group.
The Fed kicked off its rate-cutting campaign in September with a larger-than-usual cut of half a percentage point, as it turns more attention to keeping the job market solid instead of focusing on just driving inflation lower.
The two-year Treasury yield, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed’s actions, initially fell following the jobs report but then climbed to 4.20 per cent from 4.18 per cent late Thursday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which also takes future economic growth and other factors into account, likewise rose after a knee-jerk drop.
It climbed to 4.37 per cent, up from 4.29 per cent late Thursday.
Economists said Friday’s jobs report contained a lot of noise and perhaps not much signal. Besides two hurricanes that left destructive paths across the US during the month, a strike by workers at Boeing also helped depress the numbers.
All those distortions make the numbers difficult to parse, “but it doesn’t change our view that the labour market should further decelerate in coming months,” said Senior Global Market Strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute Scott Wren.
The hope on Wall Street is that the economy will still avoid a recession, even with that expected slowdown in the job market, thanks in part to coming cuts to interest rates by the Fed. The overall economy has so far remained more resilient than feared.
A separate report on Friday said US manufacturing contracted by more last month than economists expected. It’s been one of the areas of the economy hurt most by the Fed’s keeping interest rates at a two-decade high until September.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe after finishing lower across much of Asia outside of Hong Kong.
The price of oil, meanwhile, rose again to further trim its loss for the week. A barrel of benchmark US crude rose 0.4 per cent. Brent crude, the international standard, also climbed 0.4 per cent.
