Stock market today: S&P 500, Nasdaq, Dow slip after jobs report shows dramatic slowdown

Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:

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Gold (GC=F) futures surged to record levels on Friday after a weak jobs report, upping the odds the Fed Reserve will cut rates in September.

Gold surged past $3,650 per ounce, climbing nearly 6% over the past five sessions.

Gold is up nearly 40% year-to-date, driven by bets on an imminent Federal Reserve rate cut at this month’s policy meeting.

Wall Street analysts say prices are also being supported by concerns of weakening Fed independence after President Trump moved to oust Governor Lisa Cook.

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi reports:

The US economy created a mere 22,000 jobs in August, badly missing economists’ estimates of around 75,000. The jobs figures for June and July were revised down by a total of 21,000 jobs.

Blame it on Trump’s tariffs sowing the seeds of uncertainty among hiring managers or AI playing the role of bulldozer through offices. The reality is the job market has cooled, and that has implications for investors.

Here are a few quick hot takes:

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President Trump criticized Jerome Powell on social media Friday, the latest in a slew of attacks on the Federal Reserve chair in a sustained campaign against the central bank.

“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell should have lowered rates long ago. As usual, he’s ‘Too Late!’ Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday.

Trump’s continued tirade against Powell — and of late, his push to remove Fed governor Lisa Cook — have put the independence of the central bank in question. The president is seen as looking to recast the powerful institution in pursuit of interest-rate cuts.

His comments followed a weaker-than-expected August jobs report from the BLS — the first since Trump ousted the head of the agency in the wake of the July reading.

At the same time, revisions to job addition figures in previous months showed that June was the first month of shrinkage since 2020.

Those numbers lifted investor confidence in rate cuts from the Fed to new highs, with traders now pricing in 100% odds of a reduction when policymakers meet later in September.

Broadcom (AVGO) added $138.5 billion to its market cap in intraday trading after the AI chipmaker’s third quarter results surpassed Wall Street’s expectations.

The company also said it had landed a $10 billion order from a new AI customer (reportedly OpenAI), lifting its revenue forecast for that business.

Shares of the chipmaker touched an intraday record high of $356.24 each during Friday’s session, before paring gains to hover above $330. Its market value is now around $1.6 trillion.

Meanwhile, AI chip rival Nvidia (NVDA) shed $160.6 billion from its own market cap as its shares fell 3.6% on Friday. It remains the most valuable company in the world, with a value over $4 trillion.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) stock also suffered, with dropping nearly 6.8% in intraday trading.

Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya said Nvidia stock could experience near-term pressure as Broadcom captures greater market share in AI chips. But “the AI pie could just be getting bigger,” he wrote in a note to clients.

Yahoo Finance’s Jennifer Schonberger reports:

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Tesla’s (TSLA) stock popped as much as 4.9% on Friday after the EV maker’s board put forward a plan to compensate CEO Elon Musk with a pay package worth roughly $1 trillion, if he achieves certain milestones.

Those milestones include driving Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion and putting 1 million of its Robotaxis into commercial operation, according to the proposal outlined in an SEC filing.

This pay package would provide Musk with an additional 423 million shares of common stock, or 12% of Tesla shares. That means he would have roughly 25% voting power over the company’s decisions, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to clients Friday.

Ives said the voting power provision was “critical to keep Musk at the helm to lead Tesla through the most critical time in the company’s history.”

“We believe this was the smart move by the Board as the biggest asset for Tesla is Musk,” Ives said, adding: “[T]his is a crucial time for Tesla ahead, with autonomous and robotics front and center.”

The stock pared gains shortly after the market open, and was up more than 2% in mid-morning.

US stocks jumped at the open on Friday as investors digested a weak August jobs report, which pushed investor confidence in a rate cut at the Fed’s September meeting even higher.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) gained 0.4%, coming off a fresh all-time closing high for the index on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained 0.6%.

Tech stocks’ surge was led by gains in Tesla (TSLA) and Broadcom (AVGO) shares, which added 3.6% and 12.8% at the start of Friday’s trading session.

Bets on coming Fed rate cuts are surging after the jobs report.

CME Group had the odds of a cut very high before the report — around 97% to 3%. But after it confirmed the severe summer slowdown, the odds almost immediately shifted to 100% on a 25-point cut this month.

Subsequently, traders piled into bets on a “jumbo” rate cut — 50 basis points. As of around 9:10 a.m. ET, about 88% of bets are on a 25-point cut, and 12% of bets are for 50 points.

Bets are also jumping on cuts in October and December. By the end of the year, a majority of traders expect the equivalent of three rate cuts.

The revisions to the monthly jobs report have taken high focus lately. On Friday, we learned something very noteworthy from them: June 2025 was the first month of labor market shrinkage since 2020.

June’s number was revised to show a net loss of 13,000 jobs. That’s the first negative monthly jobs print since December 2020, in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As my colleague Jake Conley notes, this report’s revisions found that, over the last three months, the US economy added 8,000 fewer jobs per month than had been previously reported.

You can see the slight dip in the chart below:

The US labor market continues to slow.

The August jobs report released Friday by the the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed there were just 22,000 new jobs added to the economy last month, far fewer than forecast and the latest sign that the US labor market slowed down through the summer. The unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in August.

Economists had expected the report to show 75,000 jobs created last month, with the unemployment rate forecast to rise to 4.3%, according to Bloomberg data.

In July, the economy created 73,000 new jobs. Those figures were revised on Friday to show 79,000 jobs created during the month. Revisions to June’s data, however, were more negative, with those numbers now showing 13,000 jobs lost during the month. Revisions in early August had brought June’s job growth down to 14,000.

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Here’s a look at some of the top stocks trending in premarket trading:

Broadcom (AVGO) stock rose 8% before the bell on Friday after a upbeat outlook for artificial intelligence revenue and CEO Hock Tan’s pledge to stay on for five more years reassured investors.

DocuSign (DOCU) stock rose 8% in premarket trading on Friday reported an earnings beat and revenue outlook raise on Thursday.

lululemon (LULU) stock slumped on Friday in premarket trading after slashing its annual profit and sales forecasts, hurt by tepid

Lululemon (LULU) stock is taking a pounding in premarket post-earnings, as it should.

The quarter and outlook both stunk. The results are deserved, as people I talk to in retail have been super let down in Lululemon’s product assortments in recent months. It will take time to reverse the lack of must-have items, they say.

Here is the Street vibe on Lululemon this morning:

“Challenges from domestic market pressures and removal of the de minimis exemption are primary drivers of a meaningful cut to FY25 guidance (implying -4.4% lower 2H revenue and -22% lower 2H EPS at the midpoint). Acknowledgment of underperformance within the casual side of the business (40% revenue mix) is a starting point, though reigniting brand momentum in the U.S. is likely to take longer than we had previously anticipated.” — Stifel analyst Peter McGoldrick

“It’s very simple… With sales per foot 4x mall avg and margins near peak, LULU’s fundamentals will get much worse ahead. The US drives the earnings and the US is fading fast here. We believe the guide is not low enough and continue to carry estimates well below the Street/company guide. Rising competition won’t stop either, which means LULU’s EPS is permanently impaired. With lower growth and brand strength fading, a lower multiple is warranted.” — Jefferies analyst Randy Konik