Friends
The news that the Russians had bombed then subsequently seized Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant helped set the negative tone for stocks as the trading session began this morning. Stocks moved lower at the open and remained in negative territory despite a darn good jobs number. Nonfarm payrolls came in stronger than expected, 678,000 vs. the 420,000 estimate. The unemployment rate came in at 3.8% which was about as expected, but the average hourly wage number was quite a surprise. It was expected that wages had risen about .5%, but instead the number was flat. All said, stocks still have quite a wall of worry to climb.
For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 179 points to close at 33,614. The S&P 500 was down 34 points to finish the day at 4,328. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 224 points to close at 13,313. Gold was up $35 to trade at $1,971 per ounce, while oil was up $8 to trade at $115.67 per barrel WTI.
Don’t forget that we are doing a Q&A webcast next Tuesday at 11:30. You can get your questions in ahead of time and we will address them on Tuesday. In the meantime, we go into each weekend during this war in Ukraine holding our breaths and keeping our fingers crossed. Let’s see what Monday brings.
Have a great weekend everyone.
