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Stocks mixed, Oil slides, Treasury yields tumble, Gold surges near record high, Payrolls rise but well below expectations, Dogecoin futures set record as crypto climbs, 5K GM salaried workers take buyouts, and more financial news.
Stocks were mixed on Wednesday. Oil slid and treasury yields tumbled, while gold gained and moved toward record-high territory.
The S&P 500 was down -5.58 points or -0.14%, while the Dow was up 74.62 points or +0.22%, and the NASDAQ slid -76.25 points or -0.63%, as of 9:47 AM EDT, Yahoo Finance reported.
In oil futures, the recent rally appeared to end early on Wednesday with WTI crude down -0.22% and trading at $80.53 a barrel, while Brent crude dipped -0.18% and traded at $84.79 a barrel as of 8:48 AM CDT.
Treasuries moved lower on Wednesday as the 2-year fell below 4 percent territory. The benchmark US 10-year Treasury was down -0.017 for a yield of 3.32%, while the 2-Year Treasury slipped -0.079 for a yield of 3.755%, as of 9:54 AM EDT on Wednesday.
Gold futures closed above the $2000 an ounce threshold on Tuesday for the first time since March 2022, a 13-month high, after data showed job vacancies dropping at US employers in February to the lowest level since May 2021, a sign that the Fed’s effort to cool inflation is having an effect, Yahoo Finance reported. Gold is currently nearing an all-time high of $2075.47, reached in August 2020. Gold futures for June 2023 were at $2048.30 as of 9:41 AM EDT on Wednesday.
Private payrolls rose by 145,000 in March but fell below the 261,000 hirings in February and came well under analysts’ expectations of 210,000, according to data from ADP. Jobs in professional and business services fell by 46,000, while the financial activity sector lost 51,000 jobs. The biggest rise in jobs was in leisure and hospitality, with 98,000 new hires, while jobs in trade, transportation, and utilities grew by 56,000, and construction jobs rose by 53,000, CNBC reported.
Dogecoin futures set a record after Twitter adopted the Shiba Inu logo, surging as much as 35% after CEO Elon Musk replaced the popular blue bird logo with a picture of a Shiba Inu dog earlier this week. Futures contracts surged to nearly 6 billion DOGE tokens as of Tuesday night, CoinDesk reported
As of 9:31 AM EDT, Bitcoin was up +0.74% to $28,498.82, while Ether rose +2.12% to $1917.36, Binance Coin advanced +1.29% to $315.85, and Dogecoin dipped slightly at -0.80% to $0.096.
Around 5,000 white-collar workers at General Motors took a buyout offer to step away from their jobs, and now the company says that will be enough for the automaker to avoid layoffs at this time, ABC News reported. The company said the offers would save about $1 billion per year in costs. However, the number still is only half the $2 billion annually the company wants to reduce by the end of 2024. Following the layoffs, the company still employs about 58,000 salaried workers in the US.
