After coming under pressure early in the session, stocks showed a substantial rebound during Friday. The turnaround lifted the Dow to its best closing level for the year, while the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 reached three-month closing highs.
For the week, the tech-heavy Nasdaq soared by 3 percent, while the Dow and the S&P 500 jumped by 1.6 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively. But the NYSE and the small cap Russell 2000 continue to lag – struggling below the 200-day moving average and well below recent highs in 2015 – suggesting this support for equities may be limited and short-lived.
Overseas, the Asia-Pacific region moved mostly lower on Friday. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index plunged by 3.6 percent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index tumbled by 1.3 percent. China's Shanghai Index was essentially flat, up by 0.19%.
The major European markets also came under pressure on the day. While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index dropped by 0.5 percent, the French CAC 40 Index and the German DAX Index slumped by 1.4 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.
The initial weakness for US markets came following the release of the Labor Department's closely watched monthly jobs report, where the government reported that non-farm payroll employment climbed by 215,000 jobs in March after jumping by an upwardly revised 245,000 in February. Economists had expected an increase of about 210,000 jobs.
A negative aspect of this month's jobs report showed that the unemployment rate inched up to 5.0 percent in March from 4.9 percent in February. The unemployment rate had been expected to remain unchanged. Spinners are claiming that an improved labor market is bringing long-sidelined unemployed back out looking for jobs – as you know they haven't counted as unemployed once they no longer keep looking.
The warts on this jobs report are that nearly 30,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector and the bulk of new jobs came in the part-time retail sales area. We are declining in good paying manufacturing jobs and creating low-paying service sector jobs – a strong reason why wages have remained stagnant for so many years.
