US markets closed higher in volatile trading

07 Feb 2018 Evaluate

The US markets closed higher on Tuesday, after a wild day of trading that saw the Dow ricocheting more than 1,000 points, underscoring a new regime of volatility on Wall Street. The turnaround, which follows on the heels of the blue-chip index’s worst one-day point decline on Monday, helped to return key benchmarks back to positive territory for the year. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said that he didn’t think the strong US labor market meant that higher inflation is just around the corner, pushing back on one of the market’s fears that has led to a broad sell off in stocks in recent days. The market seemed interpreted the good news from the January jobs report - a surprising pickup in average hourly earnings - as bad news, a sign that inflation would start to heat up and might force the Fed to slam on the economic brakes with quickened policy changes instead of raising rates at a gradual pace. Looking at the economy for this year, Bullard said growth would likely slow toward a trend GDP growth year-on-year after surprising to the upside last year.

On the economy front, the US trade deficit in December and for the full year both rose to the highest levels since 2008, complicating efforts by President Trump to fulfill his vow to reduce the gap. The deficit in December rose 5.3% to $53.1 billion. Imports increased 2.5% to a record $256.5 billion in December. Exports edged up 1.8% to $203.4 billion, also a new high water mark. In 2017, the US trade gap leaped 12.1% to a nine-year high of $566 billion. The large deficit in the fourth quarter prevented the US from reaching 3% growth for the third quarter in row, a feat last accomplished in 2005. Gross domestic product expanded 2.6% in the final three months of 2017, but the higher trade deficit shaved off 1.1 points. GDP is the official scorecard for the nation’s economy.

Meanwhile, the number of job openings in the United States fell slightly in December to a seven month low of 5.81 million. Openings have fallen from a recent record high in part because companies filled some 1.3 million positions in the second half of 2017. Companies hire 5.49 million people in December while 5.24 million Americans lost their jobs. About 3.3 million people quit their jobs. The percentage of people in the workforce who walked away from their old jobs, known as the quit rate, rose a notch to 2.2%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 567.02 points or 2.33 percent to 24,912.77, the Nasdaq gained 148.356 points or 2.13 percent to 7,115.88, the S&P 500 edged higher by 46.2 points or 1.74 percent to 2,695.14.

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