The U.S. stock market is closed Friday, April 7, for the Good Friday holiday, but the bond market will be briefly open.
Friday will see the release of the monthly jobs report for March, a key piece of economic data that households, investors and industry leaders will be following for clues to how much further progress the Federal Reserve has been making in its inflation fight.
An extremely tight labor market has been a boon for workers and households, but complicates the Fed’s efforts to get inflation down to its 2% annual target through higher interest rates.
“Friday’s labor market report comes at crucial juncture for markets, as investors try to understand how the Fed will weigh up the conflicting forces it is facing at the moment,” said Abigail Watt, research economist at abrdn, a global asset manager, in a client note.
“Jobs growth has generally been hotter than expected this year, and any upside surprises will add to the conundrum faced by the Fed—how to quell ongoing inflation pressures in light of the recent instability in the banking sector.”
Since Good Friday is a market holiday, but not a federal holiday, investors in the bond market will have some opportunity to respond to the jobs report in abbreviated trading hours. Trading in the roughly $24 trillion Treasury market will see an early close at 12 p.m. Eastern.
Read: Good Friday complicates how stock-market traders will digest March U.S. jobs report.
April has kicked off with mixed results for U.S. stocks, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
still was holding a gain on the year, according to FactSet data. The S&P 500 index
SPX,
was about 6% higher so far in 2023, at last check, while the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
was up 14%.
But bond yields have fallen dramatically from recent highs, with the 2-year Treasury rate
TMUBMUSD02Y,
last spotted near 3.8%, down from a high of nearly 5.1% in March. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield was around 3.3%, after climbing to 4.2% in October, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
