NEW YORK– Wall Street ended uneven on Tuesday and close to stability, awaiting data on employment in the United States on Friday.
On a day in which Treasury bond rates fell again, something that usually benefits stocks, the Dow Jones lost 0.22%, the technology Nasdaq gained 0.31% and the S&P 500 closed almost unchanged (-0.06%).
Rates on 10-year bonds continued to fall, to 4.17% against 4.25% on Monday, a low since early September.
“Mandatory returns react in line with the economic data” of the day, said Art Hogan, of B. Riley Wealth Management, referring to the Department of Labor’s JOLTS survey on job vacancies in the United States.
The data showed a sharp decrease in October, well above what analysts expected. There are 8.7 million jobs available in the country against 9.4 million in September, according to the revised figure. This is a two-year low, showing that the Federal Reserve’s restrictive monetary policy is cooling the labor market.
For Olivia Cross of Capital Economics, the Federal Reserve “can take comfort before its meeting next week that inflationary pressures from the labor market are dissipating.”
The Fed Monetary Committee meeting will be on December 12 and 13 and investors expect rates to remain at their current levels, the highest in 22 years.
Investors are awaiting Friday’s employment data and the stock market was little changed, Art Hogan noted.
Among the stocks of the day, the technology giants welcomed the decline in rates. Apple (+2.11%), Amazon (+1.41%) or Alphabet (+1.35%) ended positively.
CVS pharmacies gained 3.71% after the group revised its sales forecasts upward. The firm also increased its quarterly dividend by 10%.
