U.S. Stocks Decline as Payrolls Report Fuels Rate Speculation

[Purveyor]

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks fell, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index heading for a second straight weekly loss, as better-than-forecast jobs data fueled speculation the Federal Reserve is moving closer to raising interest rates.

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The S&P 500 fell 1.2 percent to 2,075.95 at 12:31 p.m. in New York. The equity gauge is down 1.2 percent for the week. The Dow lost 231.45 points, or 1.3 percent, to 17,904.27. The Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 1 percent. Trading in S&P 500 companies was 12 percent above the 30-day average.

“Investors are looking and focusing entirely on what the Federal Reserve will do in the coming months,” Chad Morganlander, a money manager at St. Louis-based Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., which oversees about $170 billion, said by telephone. “Effectively good news in this data point supports the notion that they will raise rates in the not-too-distant future. That scotches the speculative fervor within the equity market.”

Employers added more jobs than forecast in February and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.5 percent, the lowest in almost seven years, showing the labor market is sustaining progress after the best annual performance in 15 years.

The 295,000 advance in payrolls last month followed a 239,000 January increase that was smaller than previously reported, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 235,000 increase. The unemployment rate fell from 5.7 percent while hourly earnings rose less than forecast.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-06/u-s-stock-index-futures-little-changed-before-employment-report

[taught_me_patience]

1. It looks like the FED might raise rates in June rather than Sep

Labor supply is getting pretty tight (completely ignore the naysayers crowing about the participation rate) and wage pressure will increase dramatically over the next year or so. I just landed a nice job after being out of the labor force for a couple of years while starting a small business... job search only took a month or so. For my small business, it's getting really hard to find candidates that have skills.