NEW YORK (AP) – The stock market’s first reaction to Friday’s stunningly bad jobs report was to take it in stride. But Wall Street slid through the day as investors looked ahead to the likelihood that even worse numbers are on the way.
Stocks initially held steady after the government said U.S. employers cut 701,000 more jobs than they added last month, the first drop in nearly a decade. Many businesses have slammed to a halt amid attempts to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, and investors were fully expecting to see such abysmal numbers.
But the market headed lower as the day progressed and, as has become typical in recent Fridays, investors looked to get out of stocks ahead of the weekend, which could be filled with even more bad news. The losses accelerated after New York’s governor announced the biggest daily jump yet for deaths caused by the coronavirus in the country’s hardest-hit state.
“It was interesting to see that the initial reaction to the jobs number wasn’t more significant,” said Lindsey Bell, chief investment strategist at Ally Invest. “As that sunk in, you started to see the market start to sell off after realizing that these numbers are going to get a lot uglier.”
The S&P 500 fell 38.25 points, or 1.5%, to 2,488.65. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 360.91 points, or 1.7%, to 21,052.53, and the Nasdaq was down 114.23, or 1.5%, to 7,373.08. Small-company stocks fell far more than the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 index lost 33.76 points, or 3.1%, to 1,052.05.