NEW YORK — U.S. stocks fell Friday on worries that good news on the job market may be too good and prove to be bad for Wall Street by keeping inflation and interest rates high.
The S&P 500 tumbled 1.5% to close its fourth losing week in the last five. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 696 points, or 1.6%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.6%.
Stocks took their cue from the bond market, where yields leaped to crank up the pressure after a report said U.S. employers added many more jobs to their payrolls last month than economists expected.
Such strength in hiring is of course good news for workers looking for jobs, but it could also keep upward pressure on inflation by keeping the overall economy humming. That in turn could dissuade the Federal Reserve from delivering the cuts to interest rates that Wall Street loves. Lower rates can not only boost the economy but also increase prices for investments.
The Fed has already indicated it’s likely to ease rates fewer times this year than it earlier expected because of worries about higher inflation. That’s in part because some officials are taking seriously the possibility of tariffs and other policies coming from President-elect Donald Trump that could worsen inflation.
Friday’s jobs report may not be as strong as it seems on the surface. While the overall number of hires in December blew past expectations, “manufacturing is still getting crushed,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.
“The macroeconomy may be fine,” he said, “but each individual’s microeconomy could look very different.”
The raises in pay that workers are getting are also an important data point for the Fed, and gains in average hourly earnings were below 4% last month. That’s what “the Fed wants to see,” according to Wells Fargo Investment Institute Senior Global Market Strategist Scott Wren.
The nuanced takes helped Treasury yields give back some of their initial bursts after the release of the jobs report. But preliminary results from a separate report later in the morning underscored the issue. It suggested U.S. consumers are getting more pessimistic about where inflation is heading.
Consumers are expecting inflation in the coming year to be 3.3%, up from their expectation of 2.8% last month. It’s the highest reading in the University of Michigan’s survey since May. Expectations are worsening across different types of Americans, particularly for households that make less in income, according Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers.
The problem for Wall Street is that when traders were sending U.S. stock indexes to dozens of records last year, they were banking on a stream of rate cuts coming from the Fed. If fewer cuts materialize than expected, stock prices would likely either need to fall, or profits at companies would have to rise more strongly to make up for it.
Smaller companies can take worse hits from higher interest rates than their bigger rivals because of the need for many to borrow to grow. The Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks slumped 2.2%.
Constellation Brands tumbled 17.1% for the biggest loss in the S&P 500 after the seller of Modelo beer and Robert Mondavi wine reported weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief Executive Officer Bill Newlands said the company is seeing subdued spending from its customers, who are looking for better values.
Insurance companies were also under pressure as wildfires continue to burn in the Los Angeles area. Many of the homes that have been destroyed were in expensive areas where the typical price can top $3 million, and such high-priced damage could eat into insurers’ profit. Allstate shares fell 5.6%, Travelers dropped 4.3% and Chubb lost 3.4%.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 91.21 points to 5,827.04. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 696.75 to 41,938.45 and the Nasdaq composite sank 317.25 to 19,161.63.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach of The Associated Press.
