Rally hits wall of hot jobs, cold earnings

NEW YORK — Wall Street’s big rally to start the year wilted on Friday after a surprisingly strong jobs report fueled worries about inflation and higher interest rates.

The S&P 500 fell 1 percent for its first drop in four days, though it took an up-and-down route to get there. The bond market was more decisive in thinking the strong jobs data could push the Federal Reserve to stay firmer than expected on high interest rates, which hurt the economy and markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 127 points, or 0.4 percent, while the Nasdaq composite sank 1.6 percent.

The market already looked like it was set to weaken coming into the day, before the jolting jobs report dropped. Late Thursday, several Big Tech companies among Wall Street’s most influential reported weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

That cast concerns over a rally that had brought the S&P 500 back to its highest level since August, driven by hopes that cooling inflation may get the Federal Reserve to take a pause soon on its hikes to interest rates and possibly even cut them by late this year.

Then came the jobs report, which showed employers created a net 517,000 jobs last month. That was way above the 185,000 that economists expected and a sharp acceleration from December’s 260,000 jobs.

Normally, a strong jobs report is good for Wall Street because it means the economy is on firmer footing. But in this upside-down POST-COVID world, it could also be a worrisome sign. The Fed is in the middle of try

product to New York City and beyond. The city’s ethnic makeup, first the Dutch, then the English and Irish also fueled the industry as all of those countries had deep beer histories.

So far, Stevens has interviewed local historian Maeve Mceneny-johnson as well as Craig Gravina, co-founder of the Albany Ale Project, who leads summer walking tours of where the famous Albany Ale was brewed.

“Albany Ale had the widest reach of any American beer at the time,” Stevens said, referring to the cachet that beers brewed in Albany had, thanks in part to their relatively high alcohol content.

From Albany, Stevens plans to head south to New York City, then through Pennsylvania and eventually West Virginia where he wants to explore the nexus between that state’s unique culture, the history of illicit moonshine and a resurgence in small distilleries there, that serves as a tourist draw and economic engine.

Eventually, he plans to travel Latin America, starting with Mexico City, where there is a boomlet in pulqueras. Analogous to brew pubs, pulqueras distill and serve pulque, an ancient drink derived from the sap of agave plants.

Stevens is traveling on mass transit. He came from Boston on Amtrak, and uses a couchsurfing app to help find places to stay. Without a car, he is for now forgoing some spots — including the site of the Brotherhood Winery in Orange County, said to be the nation’s oldest.

Erik Budrakey agrees that Albany is a good spot to begin a beverage tour due to its brewing history and present status. He is co-founder of True Brew America, a beer-centric publication distributed electronically by the Times Union.

When he started True Brew in 2016 there were about 15 craft breweries in the greater Capital Region.

Today there are more than 60, he said.

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