Stock market today: Wall Street hits more records following a just-right jobs report

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose to records Friday after data suggested the job market remains solid enough to keep the economy going, but not so strong that it raises immediate worries about inflation.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.2%, just enough top the all-time high set on Wednesday, as it closed a third straight winning week in what looks to be one of its best years since the 2000 dot-com bust. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 123.19 points, or 0.3%, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.8% to set its own record.

The quiet trading came after the latest jobs report came in mixed enough to strengthen traders’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again at its next meeting in two weeks. The report showed U.S. employers hired more workers than expected last month, but it also said the unemployment rate unexpectedly ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%.

“This print doesn’t kill the holiday spirit and the Fed remains on track to deliver a cut in December,” according to Lindsay Rosner, head of multi-sector investing within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The Fed has been easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high since September to offer more help for the slowing job market, after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. Lower interest rates can ease the brakes off the economy, but they can also offer more fuel for inflation.

Expectations for a series of cuts from the Fed have been a major reason the S&P 500 has set an all-time high 57 times so far this year. And the Fed is part of a global surge: 62 central banks have lowered rates in the past three months, the most since 2020, according to Michael Hartnett and other strategists at Bank of America.

Still, the jobs report may have included some notes of caution for Fed officials underneath the surface.

Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, pointed to average wages for workers last month, which were a touch stronger than economists expected. While that’s good news for workers who would always like to make more, it could keep upward pressure on inflation.

“This report tells the Fed that they still need to be careful as sticky housing/shelter/wage data shows that it won’t be easy to engineer meaningfully lower inflation from here in the nearer term,” Wren said.

So, while traders are betting on an 85% probability the Fed will ease its main rate in two weeks, they’re much less certain about how many more cuts it will deliver next year, according to data from CME Group.

For now, the hope is that the job market can help U.S. shoppers continue to spend and keep the U.S. economy out of a recession that had earlier seemed inevitable after the Fed began hiking interest rates swiftly to crush inflation.

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