Wall Street is now running a month and a half winning streak after finishing mixed today. The much anticipated jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for October far exceeded experts’ expectations as it showed the addition of 271,000 jobs, thoroughly surpassing expectations of about 180,000, with the unemployment rate dropping lower to 5 percent. The encouraging news on employment increases the likelihood that the Federal Open Market Committee will elect to raise interest rates for the first time in over a decade, when it meets next month on December 15th & 16th.
Watch CNBC’s Rick Santelli talk about the Oct. jobs’ report below.
Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones told CNBC:
“I think (the report) does increase the chance the Fed hikes in December but of course there’s one more report before then and other data. I think investors should take this as good news. It’s a combination of we’ve seen stocks move up in the last five weeks and there’s likely to be some profit taking as people worry if the Fed does start hiking, conditions won’t be as favorable as they have been in the last five years.”
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard articulated to Reuters today:
“A very good U.S. jobs report for October on top of faster than expected progress over the last year means the U.S. economy is effectively at full employment.”
Here are the final numbers from Friday, 11/6/15 on Wall Street:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,910.27 (+46.84/ +0.26%)
NASDAQ: 5,147.12 (+19.38 / +0.38%)
S&P 500: 2,099.20 (-0.73 / -0.03%)
