NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street rose on Friday, but only after careening through another wild day. It was a fitting ending to a brutal week of scary swings. The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% after storming back from an earlier loss that had reached 1.3%. It was coming off a punishing stretch where it swung […]
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Wall Street ends its wild week with what else but more swings
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NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street rose on Friday, but only after careening through another wild day. It was a fitting ending to a brutal week of scary swings.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% after storming back from an earlier loss that had reached 1.3%. It was coming off a punishing stretch where it swung more than 1%, up or down, for six straight days.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 222 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.7%. The wild week, which was the worst for the S&P 500 since September, left the index a little more than 6% below its all-time high set last month.
The head of the Federal Reserve helped ease the market’s worries on Friday afternoon after saying he thinks the economy looks stable at the moment, and he doesn’t feel pressure to cut interest rates in order to prop it up.
Traders in recent weeks had been building bets the Fed would have to cut its main rate more than three times this year following a stream of weaker-than-expected reports on the economy. But Jerome Powell pushed back on speculation he and other Fed officials could feel pressure to act soon.
“The costs of being cautious are very, very low” right now, Powell said about holding steady on interest rates. “The economy is fine. It doesn’t need us to do anything really. We can wait, and we should wait.”
A highly anticipated jobs report released Friday morning may have given him leeway to do just that. The U.S. Labor Department said employers added 151,000 more jobs last month than they cut. That was slightly below economists’ expectations, but it was an acceleration from January’s hiring.
Recent, discouraging surveys had shown souring confidence for U.S. businesses and households because of uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs, and economists were waiting to see if Friday’s report would show if that was translating into real pain for the economy and job market.
“To sum it up: today’s print wasn’t as bad as feared,” according to Lindsay Rosner, head of multi sector fixed income investing at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Some economists, though, also warned the jobs data included concerning details underneath the surface that could imply trouble ahead. The number of people working part time who would rather be full time rose 10% in February from January, for example.
“The market might breathe a sigh of relief that the labor market was still looking healthy, but a deeper dive shows that spring could be a more challenging season,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.
The whiplash actions from the White House on tariffs — first placing them on trading partners and then exempting some and then doing it again — have raised uncertainty for businesses.
But Trump supporters say Friday’s job numbers should silence critics of the President’s tariffs policies.
For his part, Mr. Trump seems comfortable with any uncertainty, saying that any financial pain from import taxes is a mere “disruption” that will eventually lead to more factories relocating to the United States and stronger growth.
Market watchers say if President Trump’s plan succeeds, the Republican would cement his reputation as an unconventional leader who proved doubters wrong.