Stocks close lower for fifth straight week
The Dow closed down more than 90 points after the Department of Labor released a discouraging jobs report on Friday
A pair of traders work in their booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday, June 3, 2011. Stocks closed low on Friday, continuing a five-week streak of losses.
Richard Drew / AP
By Abby Schultz JeeYeon Park, CNBC.com
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Stocks finished lower for the fifth-consecutive week after the disappointing government jobs report in addition to other weak economic news throughout the week indicated signs of a slowdown.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 97 points, recovering from a 144-point drop earlier in the session.
AmEx and DuPont were among the blue-chip laggards. And tech bellwether Cisco tumbled to multi-year lows.
The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq also finished lower. The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, slipped 0.77 percent to finish at 17.95.
All key S&P sectors finished lower this week, the first time since the 2010 market lows in July.
For the week, the Dow declined 2.33 percent, the S&P shed 2.29 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 2.32 percent.
This is the first time the Dow has fallen five weeks in a row since July 2004, and the first time for the five-week stream by the S&P 500 since July 2008.
The fact the S&P 500 has moved back above 1,300 after it broke through that level earlier in the day may be a good sign that the market isn’t ready to move much lower, said Marc Pado, market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.
But the fact stocks remain lower reflects caution on the part of traders. “You’re going to have a lot of negative headlines over the weekend plastered everywhere,” Pado said. “I’d rather go out the weekend a little bit cautious, and not be too long or too aggressive.”
Stocks took a hit at the open after nonfarm payrolls rose by only 54,000 in May, the smallest increase for jobs since September 2010, according to the Labor Department. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected to see 150,000 jobs added in May after a gain of 244,000 jobs in April, an 11-month high.
Private payrolls gained 83,000, while government payrolls fell 29,000, the government said. The unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent, instead of falling to 8.9 percent, as expected.
"It's hard to look at the report and see any strength here," John Canally, economist at LPL Financial said of the jobs news, adding that the weakness isn't surprising at this point in an economic recovery.
"You tend to get some data that’s choppy two years into a recovery," he said. "This is one of these times when the data is not all good."
Canally doesn't think the job news warrants a third round of bond buying or quantitative easing. But talk of what the market calls "QE3" emerged immediately after the numbers were released.
