US Stock Market Today: Dow, S&P 500 Falter As Jobs Data Shows Sluggish Economy

The main Wall Street indices opened in the red on Tuesday after US job data for November painted a sluggish picture of the economy.

S&P 500 opened 0.14% or 9.21 points lower at 6,807.30, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite opened 0.21% or 49.04 points at 23,008.37, and Dow Jones Industrial Average opened 0.04% or 18.87 points lower at 48,397.69.

According to official government data that was released earlier in the day, the unemployment rate in the country has reached a four-year high of 4.6%, indicating a slowdown of the economy.

As of 10:16 a.m. EST or local time, Dow Jones traded 0.27% or 130.86 points lower at 48,285.70, whereas S&P 500 traded 0.16% lower at 6,805.23 and Nasdaq was little changed at 23,057.99.

Most of the Magnificent Seven stocks traded lower, with IT bellwether Nvidia Corp. down 0.67% to $175.02, Apple Inc. down 0.71% at $272.20, Google-parent Alphabet Inc. down 18% at $307, Tesla Inc. falling 0.25% to $473.91 and Microsoft Corp. also dipping 0.35% to $473.20

Only Meta Platforms and Amazon Inc. traded 0.54% and 0.20% higher at $651.03 and $223.05, respectively.

In commodities market, spot gold rose for a sixth session, up 0.45% to nearly $4,324 an ounce. On the other hand, spot silver prices dropped nearly 1% to $63.49 per ounce.

In the crude basket, West Texas Intermediate fell sharply by 2.60% to $55.19 a barrel, while Brent Crude fell 2.54% to $59.02 a barrel.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2% while euro rose 0.3% to $1.1784. Both the Japanese yen and British pound rose 0.3% and 0.4% to 154.82 per dollar and $1.3434, respectively.

Bitcoin, the largest traded cryptocurrency, rose 1.2% to $87,280.26.