First Week of 2008 Ends on a Plunge
The first week in 2008 ended on an extremely down note, as the DOW dropped 256 points to close at 12,800. The government’s jobs report was released in Friday, stating that December hiring was off, adding to an already unstable economy. Quoting an article on thestreet.com:
The pullback came after the Labor Department reported that 18,000 jobs were added in December, well short of economists’ expectation of 70,000. The unemployment rate jumped to 5% from 4.7% in November, surpassing forecasts of 4.8%. Average hourly earnings rose a greater-than-expected 0.4%.
Not good news for an economy already low on confidence and expecting more bad news when the next round of quarterly reports come out in the coming months. The U.S. isn’t the only economy feeling the squeeze. Japan’s Nikkei was down a whopping 4% the day before, although other major Asian markets were up. Europe’s major markets were down as well.
In the U.S. financials and tech stocks were the hardest hit, as Google, Apple, and Oracle were all down substantially. Intel was among the hardest hit, as it was downgraded to overweight by JP Morgan Chase.
