NEW YORK — Stocks offered up an early rally and closed lower Friday, marking their 3rd losing week in a row and extending Wall Street’s late-summer depression.
Major stock indexes atfirst climbedup broadly following the federalgovernment’s mostcurrent task market report, which revealed companies slowed their employing in August. The report put traders in a purchasing stateofmind, stiring mindful optimism that the Federal Reserve might not requirement to raise interest rates as strongly in its continuous quote to tame inflation.
But the market reversed course by mid-afternoon, shedding all its gains. That left the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average 1.1% lower. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.3%.
“The tasks report today was good, however it was not enough to certainly sustain the rally,” stated Ross Mayfield, financialinvestment strategist at Baird. “The bar to clear is ‘does this modification the trajectory of the Fed?’ And I wear’t understand that this report is enough to state yes.”
In current weeks, the market has cleaned out much of the gains it made in July and early August as traders anxious that the Fed would not let up anytime quickly on raising interest rates to bring down the greatest inflation in years.
The newest tasks information appeared to provide traders some hope that a secret chauffeur of inflation is cooling. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy included 315,000 tasks last month, down from 526,000 in July and listedbelow the average gain of the previous 3 months. The joblessness rate likewise increased to 3.7% from 3.5% in July.
Average perhour pay leapt 5.2% last month from a year earlier, however slowed alittle from July to August. That’s a welcome indication in the inflation battle, as companies usually pass the expense of hig