NEW YORK —
When jobs fall, the stock market follows.
That was the message investors sent Wednesday, when they ignored a few flashes of positive news about the economy and instead homed in on troubling reports about jobs in the U.S. and Europe.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell as much as 87 points before ending the day down 10.75 points, at 13,268.57. It was an about-face from the day before, when investors chose to focus on a couple of positive reports on U.S. manufacturing and sent the Dow up 66 points to its highest close in more than four years.
Some investors say they’re certain that stocks will continue an overall climb for the rest of the year. As justification, they cite strong first-quarter earnings. More than 330 companies on the S&P 500 have reported first-quarter earnings so far, and 77 percent have beaten analysts’ estimates, according to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet.
“The market has room to run,” said Karyn Cav-anaugh, market strategist with ING Investment Management in New York. “It doesn’t always go up in a straight line.”
The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 3.51 points to 1,402.31. The Nasdaq composite index was the outlier. It fell throughout the morning, then finished up 9.41 points at 3,059.85.
A monthly report on private-sector hiring was weighing heavily on investors, who see jobs as the key ingredient in an economic recovery.
Payroll processor ADP said U.S. businesses added 119,000 jobs in April, far fewer than the 201,000 added in March. However, investors will probably wait until Friday, when the government releases its own data on April jobs, before drawing any firm conclusions about the month.
Another jobs report from Europe underscored the gravity of the continuing debt crisis there. The 17 countries using the euro reported that unemployment rose to 10.9 percent in March, the highest since the euro was launched in 1999.
Markets fell across most of Europe, including Germany and Greece.
There was also good news out of Europe, even if it didn’t seem to sway investors. Standard & Poor’s lifted Greece’s credit rating out of default, noting how the country had recently secured a massive write-down on its debt to private investors. Germany also reported that the number of people seeking work in April slipped below 3 million, a psychologically important barrier that it hadn’t broken in that month for two decades.
