New York: Wall Street is holding steady as pressure from the bond market eases. The S&P 500 rose 0.2 per cent Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 29 points, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.1 per cent.
Treasury yields eased following the latest discouraging signals on the job market. Reports indicated weaker hiring among private employers last month and a potential increase in layoffs last week.
Neither is flashing a recession, but a slowdown in the job market could push the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate for the first time this year in a couple weeks.
A more comprehensive jobs report is due Friday.
Shares of American Eagle Outfitters are up 26 per cent after the teen fashion retailer reported more than double the second-quarter profit that Wall Street forecast late Wednesday.
The company benefitted from a frenzy of media attention in late July over its intentionally provocative advertising campaign featuring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney.
The ads — which featured the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” — sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American politics and culture.
Google gave back a sliver of Wednesday’s 9.1 per cent gain after it avoided some of the worst-case scenarios in its antitrust case. Share of the tech giant ticked down less than 1 per cent before the bell.
Later Thursday, the government releases its latest weekly layoffs data, setting the table for the more important August jobs report on Friday.
On Wednesday, government data showed that US employers were advertising 7.2 million job openings at the end of July, fewer than economists had forecast and the latest sign of a weakening US labour market.
A deteriorating jobs landscape could push the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at a meeting later this month. That’s the widespread expectation among traders, with the next big data point coming on Friday via an update on US hiring during August.
Last month’s grim July jobs report, which included massive downward revisions for June and May, sent financial markets spiralling and prompted President Donald Trump to fire the head of the agency that compiles the monthly data.
Lower interest rates could give the job market and overall economy a boost. The downside is that they can also push inflation higher when Trump’s tariffs may be already on the way to raising prices for all kinds of imports.
In Europe at midday Germany’s DAX climbed 0.8 per cent, while Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.2 per cent and the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.1 per cent.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.5 per cent to 42,580.27 while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 1 per cent to 8,826.50. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.5 per cent to 3,200.83. Taiwan’s Taiex climbed 0.3 per cent while India’s BSE Sensex added 0.5 per cent.
The Chinese markets bucked the trend, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index down 1.1 per cent to 25,056.85. The Shanghai Composite index fell 1.3 per cent to 3,765.88 on fears regulators will intervene amid excessive stock gains and liquidity.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Marziya Sharif | 
