The U.S. domestic economic recovery was not as smooth as previously expected. The data released last Friday showed the April U.S. non-farm payrolls unexpectedly and substantially fell short of expectations. Dragged down by the negative factor, the same day U.S. stock market retreated, the three major stock indexes fell across the board, with declines of more than 1%.
Market concerns about the struggling economic recovery may further pull down the demand for crude oil. Last Friday, the New York crude oil futures prices tumbled nearly 4%, falling below the $100 a barrel mark again since February of this year. The safe-haven assets gold moved up slightly, supported by funds.
The data released last Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor showed that the U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by 115,000 in April, the smallest increase over the past six months, significantly below market expectations. Although the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to the three-year low of 8.1%, this was due to a certain extent, part of the populations were out of the labor market. In the same day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 1.28%, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 1.62% and the Nasdaq composite index fell 2.25%. The defensive utility stocks were the only type of stocks ended up with an increase of 0.2% among the componential sectors of the S&P 500 index.
In view of the whole last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index pulled back 1.28% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index accumulatively decreased 2.4%, both of them appeared single weekly losses over the past three weeks. The Nasdaq composite index retreated heavily by 3.7%, recording the biggest single weekly decline since November last year.
This week, the U.S. government will announce April producer price index (PPI), and the May Thomson Reuters / University of Michigan consumer confidence index.
Investors will shift their eyes onto the Euro Zone this week, finding the investment guidelines from the elections of France and Greece.
According to the latest news, the French Socialist challenger François Hollande won the 2012 French presidential election and Nicolas Sarkozy is about to lose his job, which means the French economic polies will be changed and this have a significant influence on the European economic recovery. The U.S. stock market will test this news today.