Wall Street closes little changed after jobs report

new York Speculations of a sharp rate hike fueled by strong jobs data curbed US investors’ appetite for equities at the end of the week. The Dow Jones lost 0.2 percent to 31,338 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, advanced 0.1 percent to 11,635 points and the broad S&P 500 fell 0.1 percent to 3,899 points. On a weekly basis, the Dow was up 0.8 percent, the S&P 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq 4.6 percent.

In June, 372,000 new jobs were created in America; economists polled by Reuters had only expected 268,000. Investors are now looking ahead to another big Fed rate hike later this month. “Certainly this reinforces the view that there will be a 75 basis point rise over the next two weeks,” said Tom Plumb, portfolio manager of the Plumb Balanced Fund.