Off the wire
• China Focus: Legislators call for enhanced effort to invigorate higher education  • Zambia urged to expand maize production for regional exports  • Emirati PM upbeat about Gulf state's football win against Japan  • China closing in on anti-malaria goal  • Roundup: Coca Cola to shut down Lithuania plant, sparking competitiveness concerns  • AU calls for joint efforts to fight youth radicalization in Somalia  • Greek gov't has full confidence in national statistics agency, Eurostat: deputy FinMin  • A new semester begins in China's lonely little schools  • About 40,000 first-year students start school in Armenia  • NATO deputy chief stresses partnerships within group  
You are here: 　 Home

U.S. stocks drift lower amid economic data

Xinhua, September 2, 2016 Adjust font size:

U.S. stocks reversed early gains to trade lower around midday Thursday as Wall Street digested a batch of economic data.

At noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 77.52 points, or 0.42 percent, to 18,323.36. The S&P 500 dipped 10.15 points, or 0.47 percent, to 2,160.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 11.02 points, or 0.21 percent, to 5,202.20.

In the week ending Aug. 27, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 263,000, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 261,000, the U.S. Labor Department announced Thursday.

The four-week moving average was 263,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week's unrevised average of 264,000.

In a separate report, the department reported that U.S. non-farm business sector labor productivity decreased at a 0.6-percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2016, as output increased 1.1 percent and hours worked increased 1.7 percent.

The August purchasing managers' index registered 49.4 percent, a decrease of 3.2 percentage points from the July reading of 52.6 percent, according to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Thursday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Thursday that construction spending during July 2016 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,153.2 billion U.S. dollars, nearly the same as the revised June estimate.

Investors also kept a close eye on Friday's non-farm payrolls report. If the U.S. labor market is robust enough, analysts said it is possible for the U.S. central bank to hike interest rates as soon as September.

On Wednesday, U.S. stocks retreated further as investors pondered over the country's better-than-expected ADP employment report. Endit