Wall Street, crude prices rise on Fed stimulus speculation
Write:
Bassanio [2011-05-20]
U.S. stocks rose on Friday with the Dow Jones average topped 11,000 points for the first time since May as a worse-than-expected jobs report added hopes for more stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve.
The closely watched government payrolls report showed the U.S. economy shed 95,000 jobs in September due to widespread government layoffs while the unemployment rate stayed at 9.6 percent.
The decline in nonfarm payrolls reflected both the departure of 77,000 temporary Census 2010 workers from federal government payrolls and a decline of 76,000 in local government employment.
Private sector payroll employment edged up by 64,000. The estimates of private sector job growth for July and August were revised up by a total of 36,000. So far this year, private sector has added a total of 863,000 jobs.
"This growth (in private sector) provides more evidence that the economy continues to recover, but we must do more to put the economy on a path of robust economic growth," Council of Economic Advisers Chair Austan Goolsbee said in a statement.
The report was worse than analysts had expected, however it still drove stocks higher on speculation the Fed is more likely to announce another round of quantitative easing to prop up the economy.
The dollar slid to a 15-year low against the Japanese yen and fell sharply against the euro on the jobs data. The greenback recovered against the euro later in the day.
In late trading in New York markets, the dollar fell to 82.07 Japan Yen from 82.37 Japan Yen while the euro fell to 1.3912 dollars from 1.3939 dollars on Thursday.
The dollar's weakness boosted oil prices. Light, sweet crude rose 99 cents to settle at 82.66 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In London, Brent crude rose 60 cents to settle at 84.03 dollars per barrel on the ICE futures exchange.
A new earnings season officially kicked off after Alcoa reported its third-quarter results late Thursday. Alcoa shares rose more than 5 percent as the aluminum producer posted results which topped estimates and also raised its forecast for global aluminum consumption.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 57.90, or 0.53 percent, to 11,006.48. The Standard & Poor's 500 index added 7.09 points, or 0.61 percent, to 1,165.15 and the Nasdaq was up 18.24 points, or 0.77 percent, to 2,401.91.