Wall St. ends lower as upbeat job growth raises Fed rate concern, recession worry

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On Friday, all three key indices of Wall St. had closed out the session in a red sea of Nile following an upbeat job report from the US Labour Department alongside a sustenance in increase in average hourly wages, as market participants remained fretted that the latest set of mixed signals could prompt the US Fed to increase its benchmark borrowing cost further at its March policy meet.

In the matter of the fact, further rate-hike from the US Fed could eventually yield a recession in the US economy much earlier-than-anticipated, while a persistent rise in borrowing costs could be lethal for growth stocks.

Nonetheless, despite Friday’s retreat in the Wall Street, the Wall Street bellwether S&P 500 had reported a weekly percentage gain, while tech-stock heavy Nasdaq had reported its fifth straight week of gain.

Nevertheless, earlier in the day, US Labour Department had unveiled that the non-farm payrolls rose more-than-anticipated last month, as US employers had created 517,000 jobs last month. Besides, average hourly earnings continued to rise last month, eventually heating up a blistering inflation-surge further.

Wall St. falls after upbeat job data

Citing statistics, in the day’s Wall St. wind-down, the trade-sensitive Dow dwindled 0.38 per cent to 33,926.01 and Wall Street benchmark S&P 500 shed 1.04 per cent to 4,136.48, while tech-heavy Nasdaq was nudged as much as 1.59 per cent lower to 12,006.96.

On top of that, addressing to an unprecedented rise in US non-farm payrolls, a chief global market strategist at Invesco, Kristina Hooper said, “The jobs report "was an incredible surprise and it raises a lot of questions about what the Fed is going to do next.

What I think is causing some of the volatility is markets trying to make sense of how the Fed will perceive this”.