By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - US stocks advanced on Friday to close out the trading week after weaker-than-expected jobs data dampened expectations for a rate hike from the Federal Reserve at its policy meeting this month.
The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by 29,000 jobs last month, with the count for the prior two months also revised sharply lower, and well below the 90,000 estimate of economists polled by Reuters.
The weaker-than-anticipated data pulled down expectations
for a rate hike of at least 25 basis points from the Fed at its meeting at the end of October to 22.7%, according to CME FedWatch, from 24.4% in the prior session and 64.2% a week earlier.
"Today's news was OK insofar as it means the economy isn't roaring," said Robert Bernstone, head of trading at SummitTX Capital in New York. "But how good is that? Yes, it's fine insofar as it takes the short-term rate hike off, but there is a concern over the economy, there is a concern over inflation, so cautious optimism is kind of where people are."
"But with that said, a potential squeeze into the end of the year, or at least for the next month or two, could happen just because it's a hated rally."
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 57.93 points, or 0.76%, to end at 7,724.38 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 319.73 points, or 1.19%, to 27,191.33. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 260.15 points, or 0.51%, to 51,186.71.
SMALL-CAP STOCKS OUTPERFORM
Tempered expectations for an impending rate hike helped boost rate-sensitive stocks such as the S&P 500 real estate index, and the small-cap Russell 2000 index, which gained about 1% and registered its biggest daily gain in a month.
Megacap stocks helped lead the advance, with Nvidia and Tesla among the biggest boosts to the S&P 500. Tesla's gains helped lift the S&P 500 consumer discretionary index about 1% as the best-performing of the 11 major S&P sectors.
A string of recent data showing resilient economic activity and a slower-than-expected increase in prices, along with comments from two top policymakers cautioning against another rate increase, had already led investors to scale back expectations this week for an October rate hike.
Despite Friday's gains, both the Dow and S&P 500 recorded a fourth weekly decline in the past five, but the Nasdaq secured a weekly gain, its fifth in the last six.
Nike stumbled after the US sportswear company forecast a surprise steep drop in annual revenue due to weakness in China, announced job cuts and decided to shake up its global business divisions.
Shares of data storage providers fell, with Western Digital and Seagate Technology both tumbling as the worst performers in the S&P 500 tech index. Nikkei reported that Japanese technology group Toshiba plans to double its production capacity for hard disk drives used in AI data centers within fiscal 2027.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; additional reporting by Johann M Cherian, Tharuniyaa Lakshmi and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Shashwat Chauhan; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Shinjini Ganguli, Rod Nickel)
