NEW YORK : Global stock indexes climbed on Friday with Amazon.com shares rallying following the company’s stronger-than-expected results, while benchmark 10-year Treasury yields rose as investors digested a weak U.S. jobs report.
Amazon.com shares jumped 6.2 per cent after its report late on Thursday. It also indicated that it expected healthy results in the holiday quarter.
The share gain helped offset a 1.2 per cent decline in shares of Apple following the iPhone maker’s modest growth outlook.
“We’ve made it most of the way through the Big Tech names, and (results) were probably not as bad as people feared and, in some cases, were pretty good. So investors decided that the little bit of a sell-off we had the last couple of days was unwarranted,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment office in New Vernon, New Jersey.
Treasury yields initially tumbled after the jobs data, which showed the U.S. economy barely added any jobs in October, though the numbers were heavily disrupted by industrial action and hurricanes.
The U.S. unemployment rate, however, held steady at 4.1 per cent, offering assurance that the labor market remained on a solid footing.
Benchmark 10-year yields were last up 2.5 basis points at 4.309 per cent after earlier dropping to 4.222 per cent. They reached a nearly four-month high of 4.339 per cent on Tuesday.
Traders are now pricing in 99 per cent odds of a 25-basis-point cut at the Fed’s Nov. 6-7 meeting, up from 93 per cent before the data, and an 83 per cent probability of a 25-basis-point reduction at both its November and December meetings, up from 71 per cent earlier on Friday, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.
The focus will now turn to the U.S. presidential election, with polls pointing to a knife-edge race. Polls, both nationally and