Investing.com – Wall Street slumped on Friday as a disappointing jobs report and trade tensions between the U.S. and China weighed on market sentiment.
The S&P 500 was down 16 points or 0.62% to 2,646.38 as of 9:37 AM ET (13:37 GMT) while the Dow composite decreased 180 points or 0.74% to 24,324.53 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite fell over 36 points or 0.51% to 7,040.21.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on China, prompting investor worry of a trade war between the two biggest countries in the world.
On Thursday Trump said he was asking the United States Trade Representative to consider $100 billion more in tariffs as a retaliation against China.
China’s state media said Beijing will defend its interests “against new U.S. actions.” The country has already announced two sets of tariffs this week in a tit-for-tat against technology, steel and aluminium tariffs imposed by Trump but neither side has announced an effective data for the tariffs.
Investors were also digesting news that the U.S. economy added less jobs than expected in March. Nonfarm payrolls (NFP) rose by 103,000 in March, compared to expectations for 193,000 jobs, according to official data released on Friday.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) was among the biggest decliners after the morning bell, falling 1.39% while Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) dipped 1.30% and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) inched down 0.75%. Meanwhile General Electric (NYSE:GE) fell 0.86% while Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was down 0.77% and Dropbox Inc (NASDAQ:DBX) lost 1.28%.
Elsewhere Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) rose 1.15% while Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP) gained 0.59%.
In Europe stocks were down. Germany’s DAX fell 65 points or 0.53% while in France the CAC 40 decreased 11 points or 0.21% and in London, the FTSE 100 was up two points or 0.03%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 lost 21 points or 0.62% while Spain’s IBEX 35 slumped 24 points or 0.26%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.63% to $1,336.90 a troy ounce while crude oil futures increased 0.14% to $63.63 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.30% to 89.85.