Sherif Adel (Washington)
The data of the US Department of Labor issued on Friday did not succeed in reassuring stock investors, as major indices continued their weekly decline for the third week in a row, and the Nasdaq index completed its sixth consecutive day of losses for the first time, in nearly three years, after expectations of continued interest rates increased at their restrictive levels for a short period of time.
On Friday, the US Department of Labor data showed that nearly 315,000 jobs were added during the month ending August, down more than two hundred thousand jobs compared to July. Investors considered that this might be a motive to loosen the grip of the Federal Reserve when raising interest rates during its upcoming meetings, so the session started with a rise for most stocks, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded a rise of more than one percent, before turning into the red zone in the middle of today’s trading.
The three major stock indices lost more than one percent of their value during Friday’s trading, to end the week with weekly losses that exceeded three percent, and the Nasdaq index, most affected by interest rate changes, reached more than four percent. Expectations of continued high interest rates for increasing periods have deepened stock losses over the past three weeks, until the S&P 500 index’s losses reached more than eight percent.
stock price fluctuations
Investment analyst Kali Cox expected stock prices to continue to fluctuate over the next few months, stressing that “inflation and the labor market have recently approached a state of equilibrium, but no one knows how much that will cost, and this is what the markets are trying to reach now.”
And in the middle of last month, with the publication of the details of the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s meeting in the last week of July, it seemed clear to investors that the Fed would focus its efforts during the coming period on fighting inflation, by tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates, regardless of what this might cause. The decline in economic activity in the country.
A week ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirmed the same meaning, warning Americans of “great pain for American families and companies with the bank’s tendency to maintain interest rates at high levels, which may cause the economy to slow.