Stocks notch worst weekly decline since March 2023 after August jobs report

• US stocks fell sharply on Friday after a weak August jobs report raised recession fears.

• The S&P 500 had its worst week since March 2023, dropping about 4%.

• The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its September 18 meeting.

US stocks declined sharply on Friday after a weaker-than-expected August jobs report set off fresh fears about a recession.

The S&P 500 closed out its worst week since March 2023, dropping about 4% in the week, while the Nasdaq 100 dropped nearly 6%.

The US economy added 142,000 jobs in August, below the average economist estimate of 164,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.3%.

While the jobs report wasn’t as jarring as the July reading, which saw the unemployment rate unexpectedly jump, it affirmed the cooldown of the labor market and the need for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its September 18 policy meeting.

New York Fed President John Williams said in a speech on Friday that it’s time to cut rates.

“It is now appropriate to dial down the degree of restrictiveness in the stance of policy by reducing the target range for the federal funds rate,” Williams said.

The market expects a 25-basis-point interest-rate cut from the Fed later this month, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. It was see-sawing between 25 and 50 basis points earlier in the day.

The August report decisively shows how the US job market has weakened in recent months, with the three-month moving average of monthly job gains dropping from just under 270,000 in March to just over 110,000 in August.

JPMorgan wrote following the report that the data pointed to the “waning vigor” of the labor market and should prompt a larger, 50-basis-point cut from the Fed at its upcoming meeting.

But the stock-market weakness in the past week is typical, according to Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, who believes that this decline is right on time based on weak September seasonality.

“Even if we are cautious about the next 8 weeks, to us, stocks are at the lower end of the range, and we see more upside than downside,” Lee told clients in a note on Friday.

Analysts at Ned Davis Research echoed the sentiment, saying that the September sell-off was ultimately a buying opportunity as the stock market approached its best three-month stretch of the year.

Here’s where US indexes stood at the 4 p.m. closing bell on Friday:

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Here’s what else was happening on Friday:

In commodities, bonds, and crypto:

• West Texas Intermediate crude oil decreased 1.55% to $68.08 a barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 1.83% to $71.36 a barrel.

• Gold was down 0.82% to $2,522.20 an ounce.

• The 10-year Treasury yield was down 1 basis point to 3.719%.

• Bitcoin dropped 4.48% to $53,651.

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