NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. stocks stumbled Thursday, as investors digested conflicting economic data ahead of Friday's all-important jobs report.
The day started on an optimistic note, as a decline in weekly jobless claimslifted hopes ahead of the April jobs reading, due Friday morning.
But shortly after the opening bell, investors were hit with a weaker-than-expected reading on the U.S. service sector, which includes the retail, construction, financial services, health care and hotel industries. The Institute of Supply Management's Service index showed that the service sector had the slowest expansion of the year in April.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) dropped 62 points, or 0.5%, the S&P 500 (SPX) slipped 11 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) fell 36 points, or 1.2%.
While the monthly jobs number is always highly anticipated by market participants, the readings for April and May will be especially important for predicting the Federal Reserve's next steps, said Forrest. Its Operation Twist program, which swaps short-term bonds on its balance sheet for longer-term securities, expires in June.
"The Federal Reserve will look at the April and May jobs number very closely to decide whether it needs to take further action or can sit back and do nothing," Forrest said. "Part of the reason we've seen a small pullback in stocks recently is because it's still unclear what the Fed will do in June."
But anything that shows even modest improvement would allow the central bank to stay put, despite cries for a third round of long-term debt buying, known as quantitative easing, or QE3.
The dollar rose against the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen.
Oil for June delivery fell $2.68 to settle at $102.54 a barrel.
Gold futures for June delivery dropped $19.20 to settle at $1,634.80 an ounce.
No comments:
Post a Comment