Stocks, dollar sink after weak jobs report suggests slowdown

United States stocks opened sharply lower following the jobs report, which one leading analyst labeled “decidedly bad”.

News of slower hiring last month jolted markets early Friday, driving government bonds up and the dollar down.

The dollar fell against the yen and the euro as traders expected US interest rates to remain low.

The Nasdaq composite rose 80.69 points, or 1.7 percent, to 4,707.78.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 200.36 points, or 1.2%, to 16,472.37 and was 1% higher for the week. The jobless rate held steady at 5.1 percent but average hourly wages fell by a cent from August. Nonetheless, 2 weak reports starts to show lost growth momentum, that when coupled with market volatility and recent tightening of financial conditions makes a tightening story hard to tell, and one that has to centre on the U3 rate.

NO SPIN: “There’s just no positive spin you can put on it”, said Russ Koesterich, BlackRock’s global chief investment strategist. “Combined with other reports, it really raises questions about the strength of the recovery”. Dow members Chevron and ExxonMobil gained 4.1 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively, while oil services company Weatherford worldwide jumped 8.4 per cent.

In the upside-down logic of Wall Street, discouraging economic reports have often been treated as encouraging because it meant the Fed would keep lending rates at record lows.

Back in the US, Nordstrom’s stock climbed after announcing that it will pay a special dividend and spend up to $1 billion buying its own shares.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index had been up by about 1.5 percent before the U.S. data was released and erased all those gains to trade down 0.7 percent going into the close of the session.

HACKED: T-Mobile sank on news that hackers had broken into a credit agency’s network and stolen information on 15 million T-Mobile customers. The company’s stock dropped 60 cents, or 2 percent, to $39.53.

OTHER SIDE OF ATLANTIC: In Europe, major indexes were slightly higher. Britain’s FTSE 100 added 1 percent.

CRUDE: Benchmark USA crude oil dropped 14 cents to $44.59 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent Crude, a benchmark for global oils, fell 57 cents to $47.81 in London.

Bond prices jumped Friday, sending yields down, as investors expected the new sign of weakness in the US would push any interest rate hike further out into the future.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.98 percent.

The Nikkei share average edged up 0.02 percent to 17,725.13.