Jobs Numbers Buoy Dow Above 17,000 For The First Time
The Dow Jones closed above 17,000 for the first time in its history on Thursday. The index was buoyed by better-than-expected news from the jobs market.
As we reported, the Labor Department announced that U.S. employers added 288,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate dipped to 6.1 percent.
It was the fifth consecutive month that employers had added more than 200,000 jobs.
The Wall Street Journal reports the markets rallied on a belief by investors that “the five-year bull market has more room to run.” The paper adds:
“The strong report for June led some analysts and investors to wonder if the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates sooner than expected. The odds of a rate increase at the Fed’s June 2015 meeting were 57% after the report, up from 51% a day earlier, according to data from CME Group. A month ago, the odds were 43%. Meanwhile, the yield on the U.S. Treasury 10-year note ticked up to 2.65% from 2.626% on Wednesday.
“But for now, stock investors don’t see higher interest rates as an immediate worry, given that inflation pressure is still low.
“Instead the evidence of an improved labor market was seen as supporting the run higher in stocks this year.”
The S&P ended almost 11 points higher, going further into uncharted territory.
JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade, told CNBC: “It was a very good report; the next leg up in stocks is the 2,000 mark on the S&P 500.”
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