This isn’t exactly what the stock market wanted to hear ahead of the Wednesday, May 3, meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee on interest rates.
Before the open of the New York Stock Exchange, the Labor Department’s March Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey–known as JOLTS— showed job openings falling to 9.59 million, below estimates for 9.6 million. And factory orders in March rose 0.9% on the month vs. February’s 0.7% drop. That was slightly below estimates for a 1.3% rise.
For the day, the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 1.11% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.08%. The NASDAQ Composite was off 10.5% and the NASDAQ 100 dipped 0.89%. The small-cap Russell 2000 showed the biggest loss for the day at 2.10%.
According to the CME FedWatch tool, the odds of a 25 basis point increase in interest rates on Wednesday is 87.6%.
Over in the bond market, the hield on the 10-year Treasury fell 14 basis points to 3.43% on a bet that a weaker economy means the Federal Reserve will end its interest rate increases soon rather than later. There was a lot of action on the short end of maturities where the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill continued its upward march to 5.12%. On April 28, the yield on the 3-month bill was 5.03%.
