Wall Street made new highs on Friday with small profits

Wall Street made new highs on Friday with small profits. A better than expected labor market report provided some support and set new records for the Dow Jones and the S&P 500. The Dow Jones index closed 0.4 percent higher at 35,209 points, the S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq composite, however, lost 0.4 percent. There were a total of 1922 (Thursday: 2169) course winners and 1398 (1175) losers. 125 (130) titles closed unchanged. "The economy continues, but without overheating," said one market participant. Another spoke of a "double-edged sword". With the US monetary tightening debate in full swing, the report has become even more important than usual. Although the economic optimists got their money's worth thanks to the positive data, there are now fears of rapid tightening of monetary policy. The situation on the US labor market was better than expected in July - the increase in jobs was stronger than forecast, and the decline in unemployment and the increase in hourly wages were unexpectedly significant. "There has been a lot of speculation about the importance of today's job market report with regard to the timing of a possible slowdown in bond purchases and the timing of a possible rate hike, be it early 2023 or late 2022," said market analyst Michael Hewson at CMC Markets. However, he does not believe that the picture of future monetary policy will be any clearer based on the labor market data. Because the Fed officials have no idea what the US economy will look like in a month - let alone in a year. Market participants referred to the great unknown corona pandemic. The spread of the delta variant makes predictions about employment and economic development difficult, it said in the trade. "I have a feeling that the situation is quite unstable - the stock market could be hit by bad delta variant news, at least temporarily. But it would be a slump followed by a quick recovery," warned Trevor Greetham of Royal London Asset Management's fund manager Trevor Greetham. With the good data, prices on the US bond market came under pressure - yields at the long end of the market rose significantly. The data suggest that US monetary policy will be tightened soon. This speculation, in turn, weighed on the gold price - the rising dollar and rising market interest rates also put pressure on it. Because rising interest rates let the luster of the precious metal fade. The dollar, on the other hand, benefited from the assumption of monetary policy tightening, the dollar index gained 0.6 percent - the euro fell to a weekly low. The oil prices also rose with the data - but then came back again and then quoted more easily. The data suggest increasing demand in the United States. However, the rising dollar put pressure on the price.