Wall Street stocks recovered some ground on Wednesday after technology conglomerate Alphabet rose on a favorable antitrust ruling, but gains were muted as investors digested softer-than-expected labor market data and a selloff in long-term global government bonds.
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, dropped 176,000 to 7.181 million by the last day of July, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its “JOLTS” report on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 7.378 million unfilled jobs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.05 percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite added about 1 percent. Alphabet jumped around 9 percent, while Apple also gained nearly 4 percent as the ruling allowed Google to continue lucrative payments to the iPhone maker.
However, a selloff in global long-dated bonds sent Japan’s borrowing costs to record highs on Wednesday, as mounting concerns over government debt sustainability and long-term inflation also rattled investors in Europe.
One concern is that the upward pressure on long-term government bond yields “creates headwinds for equity valuations,” Bill Sterling, global strategist at GW&K Investment Management, said in an email. But he added that markets continue to anticipate a Federal Reserve interest rate cut this month, which “should help deliver a soft landing for the economy and broad-based re-acceleration of economic growth next year.”
