5 Sep 2009

Wall St gains despite August job cuts

1:03 pm on 5 September 2009

Wall Street rallied on Friday after mixed results in a payrolls report issued by the Labor Department. All major indexes gained around 1%.

Unemployment in the United States is at its highest since June 1983. Employers cut 216,000 jobs in August, taking the jobless rate to 9.7%. However, the losses were smaller than expected.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 96.66 points, or 1.03%, to end at 9,441.27.

Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 13.16 points, or 1.31%, to 1,016.40. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 35.58 points, or 1.79%, to close at 2,018.78.

Trading volumes were down before the Labor Day holiday weekend. Only 1.02 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange.

About 1.74 billion shares were traded on the Nasdaq.

Other markets

Shares in Europe were also up after four days of losses.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of top shares closed up 1.3% at 962.42 points.

In Frankfurt, the DAX index ended at 5,384.43 points, up 83.01 or 1.57%.

In Paris, the CAC-40 index closed at 3,598.76 points, up 45.25 or 1.27%. The Swiss market index closed at 6,119.07 points, up 45.35 or 0.75%.

In London, the FTSE 100 closed up 54.95 points, 1.15%, at 4,851.70.

Earlier, in Tokyo the Nikkei fell 27.53 points, 0.27%, to 10,187.11 - its lowest finish since 30 July.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index finished 556.94 points higher, 2.82%, at 20,318.62.

Down Under

Stocks in Australia ended flat on Friday. The S&P/ASX 200 index rose 0.13%, or 5.9 points, to 4,435.5.

The NZX 50 index was up 7 points, or 0.21%, at 3098 on turnover of $83 million.

At 5.05pm on Friday, the New Zealand dollar was trading at

68.04 US cents, 80.98 Australian cents, 41.65 pence, 62.98 yen and 0.477 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 63.06.