S&P 500 sets seventh straight all-time high on Wall Street

>> U.S. stocks pushed further into record heights on Friday following an encouraging report on hiring across the country, though trading was shaky as the bond market was hit with another day of sharp swings.

The S&P 500 rose 17.47, or 0.4%, to 4,697.53 and clinched an all-time high for the seventh straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 203.72, or 0.6%, to 36,327.95, and the Nasdaq composite added 31.28, or 0.2%, to 15,971.59.

Trading was scattershot, though, and after climbing to an early gain of 0.8%, the S&P 500 at one point gave up virtually all of it. Stocks retrenched in the middle of the day as Treasury yields surprisingly slumped. A measure of nervousness in the stock market also made a U-turn higher around the same time.

The 10-year yield, which tends to move with expectations for the economy and inflation, dropped to 1.45% and is near its lowest level since September. It was at 1.58% just two days earlier. Analysts had varying explanations for that and other sharp moves in the bond market, which some called counterintuitive.

The Dow and Nasdaq nevertheless still joined the S&P 500 in setting all-time highs. The smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 performed even better, jumping 1.4%

An encouraging report from Pfizer helped to lift the market, particularly companies that most need daily life to return to normal from the pandemic. Pfizer rose 10.9% after it said its experimental pill sharply cut rates of hospitalization and death for COVID-19 patients. Airlines, casinos, cruise lines and live-event companies had similar jumps.

The headline report of the day was the one from the Labor Department that showed employers hired a net 531,000 workers in October. That was more than 100,000 above economists’ expectations. The gains were widespread across industries, and the government also revised higher the numbers for job growth in earlier months.

One potential worry spot for markets was a big jump in workers’ wages, up 4.9% from a year earlier, which can feed into concerns about inflation. But the numbers were relatively in line with economists’ expectations.

“It was one of those Goldilocks reports,” said Nate Thooft, head of global asset allocation at Manulife Investment Management. Besides showing strongerthan-expected hiring, “the simple reality was it wasn’t showing any overheating either.”

That’s why it was surprising that the 10-year Treasury yield fell so sharply to 1.44% from 1.52% late Thursday.