US open: Stocks jump on jobs data, Meta and Amazon spike higher

federal reserve dl bonds us usa dollar fx — US Federal ReserveFederal Reserve (US government work)

Stocks on Wall Street pushed back towards their record highs following the release of a sizzling hot January jobs report.

"That said this wasn’t bad news for US markets given that the prospect of a recession looks even further away than ever, but also means that on an economic basis a resilient US economy should mean company earnings hold up," Michael Hewson at CMC Markets explained.

At 1636 GMT, the Dow Jones Industrial was just 0.03% higher at 38,530.44, but the S&P 500 was at a fresh high of 4,946.58 after adding on 0.82%.

The Nasdaq Composite was ahead by 1.35% to 15,567.79, bolstered by spikes in the share prices of Meta Platforms and Amazon.com on the back of their latest quarterly results.

Shares of the former did especially well after management unveiled an inaugural dividend of 50 US cents per share and and a $50bn share buyback programme.

Amazon meanwhile posted fourth quarter earnings per share of $1.0 (consensus: 80 US cents).

Apple shares however dipped 0.44% with Hewson highlighting how the company's sales in the Greater China region had come in "well short" of analysts' estimates.

Fixed income investors however were getting knocked about a little, as the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note jumped 16 basis points to 4.04%.

According to the Department of Labor, non-farm payrolls surged by 353,000 in January (consensus: 180,000), alongside a 0.6% month-on-month rise in average hourly earnings (consensus: 0.3%).

That was on top of big revisions to non-farm payrolls numbers for across the second half of 2023.

Dow Jones - Risers

Chevron Corp. (CVX) $152.40 3.05%
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $408.74 1.23%
Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) $311.31 1.18%
Travelers Company Inc. (TRV) $214.20 1.03%
American Express Co. (AXP) $204.98 0.87%
Salesforce.Com Inc. (CRM) $286.14 0.83%
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) $127.21 0.66%
JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) $174.85 0.64%
Unitedhealth Group Inc. (UNH) $510.29 0.62%
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) $385.58 0.45%