Wall Street extends losses in whiplash session

U.S. stocks seesawed Friday as a precipitous selloff in tech stocks spawned another day of turbulence on Wall Street despite a surprisingly upbeat jobs report.

Thursday marked the most brutal day of trading since March, with the techheavy Nasdaq composite nosediving more than 5 percent as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and other technology stocks fell sharply.

The sector’s losses continued Friday, pulling down the three major U.S. indexes to cap a choppy first week of September.

After an early swoon, the Dow Jones Industrial and Standard & Poor’s 500 index average were nearly flat heading into the last hour of trading before turning negative again. The Dow closed down 159.42 points, or 0.6 percent, at 28,133.31.

The S&P 500 lost 28.10 points, or 0.8 percent, to settle at 3,426.96.

The Nasdaq, which had been down as much as 5 percent, recovered most of its losses to end at 11,313.13, down 144.97 points or 1.3 percent.

“The lack off a broad selloff across all sectors shows that there’s a good deal of ‘hot money’ chasing the large tech names, which can exit as quickly as it entered,” Peter Essele, head of portfolio management for Commonwealth Financial Network, wrote Thursday in emailed comments.

The mood soured Friday despite new Labor Department data showing the U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August, dropping the unemployment rate below 10 percent for the first time since the pandemic began.

The jobless rate fell to 8.4 percent, compared with 10.2 percent in July.

“The market should view these numbers as positive, and while we may continue to see a correction in the technology and technology-related stocks, there are still plenty of opportunities in companies that were more adversely impacted by the pandemic and are continuing to improve,” Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance, wrote in commentary Friday.

The economy still is a long way from recovery, given that nearly 14 million Americans were out of work last month. Permanent job losses have increased by about a third since February, coming in at more than 2.1 million.

Also some 29 million people are drawing some form of unemployment assistance, to jobless benefit data released Thursday indicates.

The volatility saw some investors head to higher ground, with gold ticking up nearly 0.3 percent.