NEW YORK (AP) – Stocks around the world racked up more losses Friday, as even a gangbusters report on the U.S. jobs market can’t pull Wall Street’s focus off its worries about the war in Ukraine.
The S&P 500 fell 0.8% and posted its third weekly loss in the last four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq composite ended 1.7% lower.
The declines for U.S. stock indexes followed sharper losses in Europe after a fire at the continent’s largest nuclear plant caused by shelling raised worries about what’s next. Markets worldwide have swung wildly over the last week on worries about how high prices for oil, wheat and other commodities produced in the region will go because of Russia’s invasion, inflaming the world’s already high inflation.
Treasury yields sank again as investors moved money into U.S. government bonds in search of safety, and a measure of nervousness on Wall Street climbed.
All the movements came despite a much stronger report on U.S. jobs than economists expected, one described as encouraging and even “fantastic.” Hiring by employers last month topped expectations by hundreds of thousands of workers, more people came back into the workforce after sitting on the sidelines and jobs numbers for prior months were revised higher.