Banks, jobs data send Wall Street higher
NEW YORK (Reuters) – US stocks climbed on Friday, with the S&P 500 closing just short of a record high, boosted by gains in financial shares as President Donald Trump moved ahead with deregulation action and by a strong payrolls report.
The S&P financial sector jumped 2% to score its best day since mid-November after Trump signed an executive order to scale back regulations in the industry that were implemented in the wake of the financial crisis, including the Dodd-Frank law.
JP Morgan Chase shares closed up 3.1% at $87.18 as the biggest boost to the S&P 500 and helped push the S&P bank index up 2.6%.
The US public and private sectors created 227,000 jobs last month, according to the Labor Department, far more than the 175,000 economists had expected.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.8% while average hourly wages grew only 0.1%, which is likely to keep the Federal Reserve on a gradual path to raise US interest rates.
“The key to the payroll number was wage growth; that takes March off the calendar [for a rate hike], that is the notion there,” said Stephen Massocca, chief investment officer, Wedbush Equity Management LLC in San Francisco.
“The Dodd-Frank think wasn’t unexpected, but it happened and it is clear the direction [Trump] is moving in and that added to it.”
The financial sector has rocketed up more than 18% since the November 8 election while the bank sector has surged more than 25% on expectations Trump would scale back regulations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 186.55 points, or 0.94%, to close at 20,071.46, the S&P 500 gained 16.57 points, or 0.73%, to 2,297.42 and the Nasdaq Composite added 30.57 points, or 0.54%, to 5,666.77.
Friday’s gains helped the indexes recoup most, if not all, of the losses from earlier in the week. The S&P and Nasdaq each gained 0.1% while the Dow shed 0.1%.
Amazon.com fell 3.5% to $810.20 after the world’s largest online retailer forecast a surprise dip in operating profit for the current quarter. The stock pulled the S&P 500 consumer discretionary index down 0.1% as the only major S&P sector in negative territory for the session.
Macy’s jumped gained 6.4% to $32.69 following a takeover approach from Canada’s Hudson’s Bay.
On Friday, the Bank of Israel set its representative rate for the US dollar at NIS 3.7600, for the British pound at NIS 4.6961, for the Canadian dollar at NIS 2.8842, for the Australian dollar at NIS 2.8758, and for the South African rand at NIS 0.2798. The bank set the representative rate for the euro at NIS 4.0399 and for 100 yen at NIS 3.3235.