US open: Stocks dip despite strong jobs numbers
US stocks were trading slightly on the backfoot on Friday as investors kept a watchful eye on bond markets in the wake of a stronger-than-expected US jobs report for September.
At 1529 BST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was edging lower by 0.19% or 50.61 points to 26,572.41, the S&P 500 by 0.06% or 1.72 points to 2,900.15, and the Nasdaq Composite by 0.37% or 28.61 points to 7,850.24.
Weighing on the latter, news headlines around the alleged tampering of US technology giants hardware by Chinese intelligence services continued to be reverberate through markets.
Meanwhile, yields on the benchmark two and 10-year US Treasury notes were both up three basis points at 2.89% and 3.22%, respectively.
Non-farm payrolls in the States increased by 134,000 last month, according to the Department of Labor, falling well short of economists' forecasts for a rise of 188,000.
But analysts ascribed much of the 'miss' to the impact of hurricane Florence, pointing instead to the large upwards revision of 87,000 for the prior two months combined and to the two tenths of a percentage point drop in the rate of unemployment to 3.7%.
Commenting on Friday's jobs data, Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: "The unemployment rate continues to trend down, and is on course for about 3-1/4% a year from now, barring a miraculous rise in the participation rate. Don’t bet on that; it's still not moving. No-one at the Fed thinks unemployment near 3% is sustainable, especially if the trend is still falling steadily at the time unemployment hits that level.
"Accordingly, we remain firmly of the view that the Fed will hike again in December and is on course to raise rates next year by at least the 75bp median dot plot forecast."
Separately, the Department of Commerce reported that the US foreign trade deficit widened by 6.4% month-on-month in August to reach -$53.2bn (consensus: -$50.7bn).
In the background meanwhile, the President of the Federal Reserve bank of New York, John Williams, said that the recent rise in market interest rates was not a reflection of worries about inflation, but just the typical reaction to a strong economy.
In corporate news, Snap Inc shares were dipping lower by 0.58 following a report of a leaked memo in which chief executive officer Evan Spiegel told employees that Snapchat is doing better now that it has begun to chase its goals at a "sustainable pace".
Elsewhere, Costco Wholesale was down by 3.27% after saying late on Thursday that it was assessing its internal control over its financial reporting.