Stocks Rise in Jobs Run-Up With Eyes on Earnings
Stocks rose as traders braced for Friday’s jobs data and sifted through a flurry of corporate earnings ahead of Amazon.com Inc.’s results.
Almost 300 shares in the S&P 500 advanced, but the index struggled to gain a whole lot of traction. Qualcomm Inc. sank on investor fears that demand for new handsets will stall in the coming year. Peloton Interactive Inc. surged as profit beat Wall Street’s expectations in the first quarterly results under new management. Ford Motor Co. sank on a profit warning. Eli Lilly & Co.’s full-year earnings forecast came in line with analysts’ estimates.
Disappointing figures from major cloud-computing companies Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. suggest reasons to be cautious about Amazon Web Services, the biggest player in the space. At the same time, a trend of growing capital expenditures as firms invest heavily in artificial intelligence could, if Amazon follows suit, force a recalibration of how profitable it can be this year.
Just 24 hours ahead of the US payrolls report, data showed initial jobless claims picked up, but remained relatively subdued. A separate report showed that labor productivity advanced at a firm pace in the fourth quarter. An upcoming revision to US job growth will be substantial but probably not as bad as initially estimated, underscoring a labor market that’s gradually cooling.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3%. The Nasdaq 100 added 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.1%.
The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced two basis points to 4.43%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%. The British pound fell 0.8%. Bank of England officials decided to cut rates to a 19-month low, with two supporting a bumper 50-basis-point cut, prompting markets to boost bets on further easing.
Source : Bloomberg
