U.S Stocks Fall as Payrolls Jump Most Since June
Stocks dropped midday with government bond yields as private payrolls increased more than expected in September and natural-gas prices fluctuated wildly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.8% to 34,054.60, with the S&P 500 down 0.7% and the Nasdaq lower by 0.4%. Energy, materials, and healthcare led intraday decliners, with all sectors trading in the red.
The 10-year US Treasury yield fell 1.4 basis points to almost 1.52%, after increasing to 1.57% earlier in the session. Natural gas November futures contract retreated 9.4% to $5.72 in the afternoon after touching $6.47 earlier in the session. The contract had surged to about $6.31 at the close on Tuesday, up from $3.68 early in August.
Natural gas prices jumped earlier Wednesday before dramatically tumbling after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was ready to stabilize energy prices by increasing gas shipments to Europe, according to Business Insider.
“Natural gas trading today has been ridiculous, swinging up and down with astonishing vigour,” Tom Marzec-Manser, a European gas analyst at commodity price agency ICIS, was cited as saying in a news report from SKY.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil dived 1.4% to $77.80 a barrel.
US crude oil stockpile, excluding inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, advanced by 2.3 million barrels during the week ended Oct. 1 after a 4.6 million barrel increase in the previous week, a bigger gain than the 1 million barrel increase expected in a survey compiled by Bloomberg.
Nonfarm private payrolls climbed by 568,000 last month, the most since June, compared with the consensus on Econoday for a rise of 428,000. The gain for August was downwardly revised to 340,000 from 374,000.
“The labour market recovery continues to make progress despite a marked slowdown from the 748,000 job pace in the second quarter,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “Current bottlenecks in hiring should fade as the health conditions tied to the COVID-19 variant continue to improve, setting the stage for solid job gains in the coming months.”
In company news, CDW (CDW) shares slumped 6.5% intraday, the second-worst performer on Nasdaq, after Morgan Stanley downgraded the IT services firm to an equal weight rating from overweight, and cut its price target to $196 from $208.
Dow (DOW) said it plans to build the world’s first net-zero carbon emissions integrated ethylene cracker and derivatives site. The company plans to decarbonize its asset base, expects to spend about $1 billion annually to achieve this goal. Shares dropped 4.3% intraday, the steepest decliner on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Acuity Brands (AYI) anticipates sales growth across its operations for fiscal 2022 after booking higher-than-expected results in the final quarter of 2021 due to strong demand amid global supply disruptions. Shares of the company surged almost 12%.
In the metals markets, gold was up 0.1% to $1,762.80, silver was down 0.4% to $22.52 an ounce, and copper was down 1.1% to $4.14 per pound.
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U.S Stocks Fall as Payrolls Jump Most Since June
