Dow rallies 300 points at the open on monster U.S. jobs report, tech stocks jump

“Stocks jumped on Friday as Netflix and Intel led a strong rebound in tech shares while Wall Street looked through a monster jobs report,” Fred Imbert reports for CNBC. “The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 342 points as DowDuPont, Intel and Caterpillar outperformed. The S&P 500 gained 1.1 percent, with the tech sector gaining more than 1.5 percent. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.5 percent.”
“Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google-parent Alphabet all rose more than 1 percent,” Imbert reports. “Tech’s move higher took place after the sector fell 5.07 percent on Thursday, its worst daily performance since Aug. 18, 2011, when it fell 5.35 percent. The sharp move lower was triggered by a dire quarterly warning from Apple, which propelled the tech giant’s stock to its worst day in six years and dampened market sentiment across the world. Apple slashed its fiscal first-quarter revenue guidance earlier this week, citing an unexpected slowdown in China.”
“Friday’s gains also come after the release of stronger-than-expected employment data. The U.S. economy added 312,000 jobs last month, much more than the expected 176,000,” Imbert reports. “JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, said the report helps dispel some of the lingering concerns about a global economic slowdown. ‘We created jobs across the board; I don’t think most of it was seasonal,’ Kinahan said. ‘But the most interesting thing on this report was the amount of people who left their jobs voluntarily. I think that’s a really good consumer-confidence measure.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A strong U.S. economy and strong U.S. consumer confidence are good news for Apple and can help to offset the current weakness in China as U.S-China trade negotiations proceed.
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