US stocks extend rally for fourth straight session after strong jobs data

Major US equity indices witnessed a mixed opening on Friday, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader S&P 500 Index rising for the fourth consecutive session.

Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index underperformed the broader markets and was being weighed down by a sharp fall in the shares of Apple. Despite better than expected quarterly results, shares of the world’s largest publicly traded company by market value tumbled around 5% as investors seemed disappointed by the announcement that the company will no longer disclose unit sales of its products.  

Meanwhile, market participants digested the latest US monthly employment details, which showed that the economy added 250K new jobs in October, much better than 190K anticipated. Adding to this, wage growth recorded their largest annual gains in 9-1/2 years and might have raised concerns about a faster pace of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

The negative factors, to a larger extent, were offset by hopes for an easing of trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies after a Bloomberg report said that the US President Donald Trump ordered a draft agreement be created ahead of talks with the Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month.  

However, a tweet by CNBC’s Washington correspondent Eamon Javers, quoting a senior administration official, said that the report president Trump is ready to cut a trade deal with China is not true, albeit did little to dent investors’ sentiment and hinder the ongoing positive momentum.  

At the time of writing this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 150-points to 25,525 and the S&P 500 Index added over 14-points to 2,754. Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index climbed around 14-points to 7,447.