Ending the trading week as America celebrates Independence Day, markets off Wall Street slightly rose amid positive jobs report for June.
This week, the U.S. markets tried to go for another recovery rally amid the recent coronavirus spikes and Fed stress test announcements.
The markets even went to a roller coaster of news such as the U.S.-China trade deal pushing through. Now, the recent U.S. jobs report for June seems to have put some hope in the markets since its reopening of the economy.
As per CNBC, The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 92.39 points higher, or 0.4%, at 25,827.36 while the Nasdaq Composite hit a record high, rising 0.5% to 10,207.63. The S&P 500 also increased by 0.5% to end the day at 3,130.01.
U.S. jobs report showed better performance than expected
As economists were expecting 2.9 million job generation in the recent jobs report, the government reported a record 4.8 million jobs. Christian Scherrmann, U.S. economist at DWS said as per CNBC:
“Another major surprise here in terms of market expectations […] What we’ve seen in May and June is a blueprint for a fast recovery, but only once the virus situation is under control.”
As seen in the chart, it looks like the U.S. still has a long way to go in terms of putting itself back up in the job market.
Wall Street on the U.S. elections and COVID-19
Despite the alarming death toll that the U.S. has been taking, it looks like the Trump administration is more focused on the elections and other political agendas. Recently, the POTUS Trump Twitch channel was suspended as well as subreddits supporting Trump.
Inderjeet Parmar, professor of International Politics at City University told CNBC that the pandemic was a chance for the POTUS to unite the country – and he missed that opportunity.
Parmar also added regarding the Black Lives Matter protests that President Trump did not offer “anything in regard to any kind of significant sympathy.”
As of this writing, there have been almost 2.8 million cases in the U.S. from the latest data of Johns Hopkins University.
CNBC also laid out a detailed report showing the possible outcomes that the U.S. markets could take moving forward.
One highlight of their report showed that the S&P 500 recovered by nearly 20% in the second quarter, and another study by Bespoke Investment Group suggested that following the prior nine quarters, the index was always up the following three months for an average of nine percent.
CNBC also claimed that July is usually a good month for stocks. However, factoring in the presence of the coronavirus may prove this claim wrong.
Another study from LPL Financial showed that while stocks usually do fairly well in election years, they usually do quite poorly leading up to an election in years when the incumbent party loses the White House.
Wall Street will be challenged in the coming months, especially with the incoming U.S. elections. Investors and traders shall see if the markets would still recover despite the rising COVID-19 cases along with other political influences in the days to come.
Featured image courtesy of Kevin Dooley/Flickr