Jobs snapback stokes biggest Wall Street surge in months
Friday, October 03, 2014 - 02:26
Summary: Stocks bounced back with a vengeance after a drop in the jobless rate and faster job growth soothed fears of an economic slowdown; JP Morgan details massive hack; More recalls for GM. Conway G. Gittens reports.
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Good jobs numbers giving stocks a massive kick higher.
U.S. employers added 248,000 jobs in September, much more than economists expected. Plus, numbers from the two previous months were revised up. The U.S. jobless rate fell to six-year low of 5.9 percent.
The Dow roared back to life in the biggest gain since March. The S&P; 500 had its biggest point surge since August and the Nasdaq was up too.
Friday's gains left the Dow and the Nasdaq down by just a fraction of a percent for the week.
Thoughts of a 10 percent market correction may have faded, but according to Nick Colas of ConvergEx Group:
SOUNDBITE: NICK COLAS, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, CONVERGEX GROUP (ENGLISH) SAYING:
"It is rational to think it is going to happen soon. And then you overlay a fairly healthy stock market valuation and an increased number of geopolitical touchpoints that investors can focus on that would be very worrisome. So it is very rational to think we're going to get a pullback this month or this quarter, simply because we haven't had one for a long time and there is a lot of reasons to expect one."
There are still questions about the kinds of jobs being created, how much they pay, and how to get the long-term jobless back to work. All questions posed to White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman.
SOUNDBITE: JASON FURMAN, CHAIRMAN, WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS (ENGLISH) SAYING:
"The answer to all of these different questions that you've been asking: wages, job quality, participation all of these comes down to can we build a stronger foundation for the economy? Can we slow the cost growth of health care, invest in clean energy, invest in our infrastructure, make sure that we have a stable financial system? All the types of foundations the president has been trying to work really hard to establish and strengthen."
In corporate headlines: a cyber attack at JPMorgan Chase going down as one of the biggest data breaches in history. It looks like names, addresses and phone numbers of roughly 83 million customers were affected but not account or social security numbers. Shares of America's number one bank rising for the day.
The number of vehicles recalled by General Motors this year approaching 30 million. The latest: more than half a million cars and SUVs because of potential latch issues or problems with loose parts. GM shares up even though the recall impacts 2015 models currently on the lot.
Mixed picture in Europe: German stocks down two percent, but gains in France and the U.K.
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