Investing.com – U.S. stocks extended gains despite a negative open after a better-than-expected non-farm payrolls (NFP) number from a monthly jobs report that only had one questionable caveat and investors eyed yet another strong rally of more than 2% in crude.
At 16:15GMT or 11:15AM ET, the Dow 30 rose 55 points or 0.32%, while the S&P 500 advanced 10 points or 0.51% and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite gained 20 points or 0.43%. In this context, Wall Street is on track to tally up its first three-week winning streak for the year.
The major news for Friday’s session (and arguably for the week stateside) was the February employment report. The U.S. economy created 242,000 jobs last month, blowing the consensus estimate of 190,000 out of the water.
The unemployment rate remained stable as expected at 4.9%, an 8-year low.
The only negative data point was that average hourly earnings unexpectedly slipped 0.1%, when analysts had forecast a 0.2% rise. This was the first contraction since January 2014.
Yet even so, economists pointed out that this data was most likely skewed to the downside due to a calendar effect of the survey being taken before workers who get paid bi-monthly on the 15th of the month received their paycheck.
Nevertheless, the consensus of experts seemed to be that the data would have little effect on the Federal Reserve monetary policy, neither bringing forward rate hikes nor pushing them back. Markets do not count on a rate hike at the next Fed meeting on March 15 and 16.
Additionally, the Atlanta Fed increased its U.S. Q1 GDP growth estimate to 2.2% from the prior 1.9% forecast published on March 1, precisely due to the report.
In other economic news, the U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected in January to $45.7 billion. Both the strong dollar and a weak global demand served to push exports to a more than a five-and-a-half year low, providing negative implications for growth in the U.S. economy during the first quarter.
The dollar initially extended gains after the release of the jobs report, but later lost favor. The U.S. Dollar Index, that compares the greenback against a basket of six other major currencies, traded down 0.39% to 97.23. EUR/USD gained 0.52% to 1.1013, USD/JPY rose 0.18% to 113.89, and GBP/USD advanced 0.33% to 1.4223.
Commodities seemed particularly attractive to investors with U.S. crude oil futures rising $0.84, or 2.43%, to trade at $35.41 a barrel by 16:21GMT, or 11:21AM ET, and brent oil gaining $0.95 or 2.56% to $38.02. Gold futures marked their highest level in more than a year and was trading up 1.17% to $1,272.90.
Among market movers from earnings, Staples Inc (NASDAQ:SPLS) slumped 1% after missing consensus with its quarterly earnings per share (EPS), while Big Lots (NYSE:BIG) jumped close to 4% thanks to beating the street with its own EPS.
Notably, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE) surged almost 14% with earnings that were better than forecast in its first report since being spun off from Hewlett-Packard in 2015.