The Dow Jones Industrials Average (INDEX: ^DJI) gave investors reason for pause yesterday, putting up its biggest drop for the year. Today, the bulls decided they didn't want to leave the party just yet and pushed all three major indices well into the black today. Here is a look at how they all fared.
|
Index |
Gain / Loss |
Gain / Loss % |
Ending Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow Jones Industrial Average | +78.2 | +0.61% | 12,837 |
| Nasdaq | +25.4 | +0.87% | 2,935 |
| S&P 500 | +9.3 | +0.69% | 1,352 |
The forest from the trees
The news moving the markets today was all about the macro data. There was an upbeat report on jobs growth from Automatic Data Processing (Nasdaq: ADP), which reported that U.S. companies added 216,000 employees last month. This is a big confidence boost ahead of Friday's nonfarm payroll numbers from the Labor Department.
There was also news that the Federal Reserve would consider buying more bonds if the economy shows further signs of weakness in the months ahead. The move would be taken to ease inflation concerns.
The specific movers
While not a member of the Dow, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) made waves in the tech space today with the unveiling of its newest iPad. The major improvements include an improved display, a quad-core processor, and 4G network support. The ability to operate on a 4G network has huge data-hog implications for high-yielding Dow components AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ). Both of the telecom giants have had to throttle their data plans recently to cope with the massive amounts of data consumed by high-use mobile devices -- like Apple's iPad.
What comes next
The Department of Labor is releasing its initial jobless-claim numbers tomorrow, and many are hoping they echo the better-than-expected jobs numbers from today. The nonfarm payroll figures and the employment report will both be released on Friday, so look for a lot of movement on those days.
If today's numbers from ADP are any indication of things to come, it should be a good week for investors.
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