Global market update: Wall Street ended the day higher on Friday due to talk of a rate delay at the US Fed meeting scheduled for September 2023. While the tech-heavy Nasdaq concluded the Friday session slightly lower, two of the three major indices ended the day higher. On the final day of the previous week, the Nasdaq closed 0.02 percent lower, the S&P 500 rose 0.18 percent, and the Dow Jones index ended the day 0.33 percent higher. These indices had, however, made substantial gains when they opened, but three main indices gave up those gains as the session went on and investors analyzed the data in preparation for the lengthy US holiday weekend. During Friday’s trades, the Small Cap 2000 index in the stock market soared 1.11%.
According to Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha, early morning deals on Wall Street on Friday were down because “today, people are coasting into the holiday weekend with relief that the job numbers were solid.”
According to Detrick, “there are signs of the economy slowing, which is what the Fed wants to see,” and “It likely opens the door for no rate hike at the next Fed meeting in three weeks.”
The Labor Department’s payrolls report revealed that the U.S. economy created more jobs than forecast last month, but rising unemployment and participation rates, as well as a welcome slowdown in wage growth, reinforced expectations that the Fed will leave key interest rates unchanged this month.
Other global market news
The loss in luxury and auto shares was offset by advances in the mining and healthcare sectors, and European equities ended the session flat. Since the middle of July, the STOXX 600 has experienced its largest weekly increase.
STOXX 600, a measure of equities across all of Europe, fell 0.01%, while MSCI’s global stock index rose 0.10%.
Stocks in emerging markets increased by 0.51%. The Nikkei in Japan increased by 0.28% while MSCI’s largest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan ended the day 0.25% ahead.
