Overview
- The Labor Department report that arrived Friday showed U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, far below forecasts and with downward revisions to May and June, signaling a weaker labor market.
- Bond markets rallied after the jobs news, pushing the 10‑year Treasury yield down toward about 4.64% and driving stocks higher so the S&P 500 closed at a record and major indexes posted their best weekly gains since spring.
- Traders sharply lowered the chance of a September Fed rate hike, with the CME FedWatch probability sliding to roughly 42%, reflecting greater sensitivity to incoming data under the new Fed leadership.
- Earnings have produced wide sector dispersion: software names plunged on profit and revenue misses at Datadog and AppLovin, memory and storage stocks fell after weaker guidance from SanDisk and Western Digital, while select tech winners such as Atlassian and Cloudflare outperformed.
- Geopolitical oil risks remain a wild card for inflation after Houthi attacks and Iran‑Oman talks over Strait of Hormuz access lifted crude volatility, and investors are now turning to July CPI on August 12 and PPI on August 13 as the next decisive market catalysts.