Wall Street’s slip on Friday was hardly a capitulation given the S&P 500 had touched a record intraday high mid-session, but still there was plenty of action thanks to another weak set of US job numbers.<\/p>\n
The S&P 500 and Dow ended down 0.3% and 0.5% respectively, while the tech-centric Nasdaq held onto a marginal 0.1% gain.<\/p>\n
Futures trading on the ASX 200 closed on Friday night pointing to a 0.3% fall this morning.<\/p>\n
Data showing jobs growth in the US cooled further in August was the catalyst for several significant shifts on financial markets.<\/p>\n
US non-farm payrolls rose 22,000 against a forecast of 75,000 new jobs.<\/p>\n
Data showed that in June, the US economy lost 13,000 jobs instead of the initially reported 14,000 payrolls gain.<\/p>\n
That saw not only an even higher conviction that the Fed would cut rates later this month but also raised the possibility the cut could well be 50bps.<\/p>\n
“This number today puts a 50-basis-point rate cut at the next meeting back on the table,” Art Hogan, a veteran strategist at B Riley Wealth Management, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“More significantly, I think 75-basis-point before the end of the year is now pretty much of a lock.”<\/p>\n
The immediate impact of the jobs news was that US and European equity markets went backwards.<\/p>\n
Fears of cracks appearing in the world’s largest economy, and the prospects of a protracted slowdown, appeared to trump the prospects of lower borrowing costs for business.<\/p>\n
US Treasury yields tumbled to five-month lows, taking the US dollar down as well and gold got another leg-up on its record-breaking run and is now eyeing $US3,600\/ounce.<\/p>\n
The Australian dollar gained 0.6% to be heading towards 66 US cents, good news if you are planning a holiday to the US, not so good if you are a local exporter.<\/p>\n
“The warning bell that rang in the labour market a month ago just got louder,” Fitch Ratings’ head of US economic research Olu Sonola told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“A weaker-than-expected jobs report all but seals a 25-basis-point rate cut later this month.<\/p>\n
“The Fed is likely to prioritise labour market stability over its inflation mandate, even as inflation drifts further from the 2% target.<\/p>\n
“Four straight months of manufacturing job losses stand out.”<\/p>\n
The jobs figures also helped drive down oil prices as traders reassessed the prospects for future demand, along with speculation about another production hike from the OPEC+ cartel.<\/p>\n
The global benchmark, Brent Crude, slid more than 2% to $US65.50\/barrel<\/p>\n
This week’s US consumer price index is the next, and last, key data to be released before the Fed’s rate-setting committee meets on September 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wall Street’s slip on Friday was hardly a capitulation given the S&P 500 had touched a record intraday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11120,11121,3571,45,49,48,10656,3237,11124,11123,100,166,11122,14503,122,176,6495],"class_list":["post-127729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-asx","tag-australian-dollar","tag-bitcoin","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dollar","tag-dow-jones","tag-live-blog","tag-live-update","tag-markets","tag-nasdaq","tag-nyse","tag-sp","tag-share-market","tag-stocks","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}