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Wall Street stocks opened modestly lower on Friday following a stronger than expected May hiring report that boosted yield on US Treasury bonds.
The world’s biggest economy added 272,000 jobs last month, significantly above expectations even as unemployment inched higher to four percent.
Following the data, futures markets cut the odds of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut in September, said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.
“The key takeaway from the report is embedded in the Treasury market’s knee-jerk selloff in the wake of the report: the Fed’s inflation concerns won’t be placated by this release,” O’Hare said in a note.
About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average wad down 0.1 percent at 38,831.03.
The broad-based S&P 500 slipped 0.1 percent to 5,345.27, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 0.3 percent to 17,130.76.
A half dozen regional banks fell after Moody’s placed the group on review for a possible downgrade due to exposure to commercial real estate risk. These included Old National Bancorp and First Merchants Corporation.
jmb/bgs
