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Stocks gave up an early rally and ended lower on Wall Street, marking their third losing week in a row.
Indexes had opened higher following a report on the job market that showed a moderate slowdown in hiring. That stoked cautious optimism that the Federal Reserve may not need to be as aggressive with high interest rates in its fight against inflation.
But the market turned lower in the afternoon after Russian energy giant Gazprom said it wouldn’t reopen a natural gas pipeline to Germany for now, a bad sign for Europe’s ongoing struggle with higher energy prices.
The S&P 500 fell 42.59 points, or 1.1%, to 3,924.26, Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 337.98 points, or 1.1%, to 31,318.44, and Nasdaq slumped 154.26 points, or 1.3%, to 11,630.86. The 10-year treasury yield closed softer at 3.195%.
U.S. stock markets are closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday.
Employers slowed their hiring in August, adding 315,000 jobs, down from 526,000 in July and below the average gain of the previous three months. The unemployment rate also rose to 3.7% from 3.5% in July. Average hourly pay jumped 5.2% last month from a year earlier, but slowed slightly from July to August. That’s a welcome sign in the inflation fight, as businesses typically pass the cost of higher wages on to their customers through higher prices.
