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U.S. stocks sank again on Thursday after a dramatic two-day rally that kicked off the quarter sputtered.
[Click here to read what's moving markets on Friday, Oct. 7]
Investors now await the Labor Department's September jobs report, due out Friday morning.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed down 1% after losses accelerated into the close while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) tumbled nearly 350 points, or 1.15%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell 0.7%. In the bond market, meanwhile, Treasury yields nudged higher, with the benchmark 10-year note (^TNX) above 3.8% and the rate-sensitive 2-year yield at 4.2%.
Investors weighed a batch of hawkish remarks from Federal Reserve officials Thursday morning. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged that the risk of overshooting was present as policy tightening still needs to work its way through the economy. Still, he asserted, he and his colleagues were "quite a ways away" from bringing down inflation.
Echoing that sentiment, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said the U.S. is in an "unacceptably high" inflation environment.
In corporate news, shares of Pinterest (PINS) bounced nearly 5% Goldman Sachs following an upgrade from Goldman Sachs. The investment bank said it believed in Pinterest's ability to grow monetization and capture a greater share of ad budgets," also pointing to a number of long-term secular growth themes.
Constellation Brands (STZ) shares slipped 1.5% despite reporting earnings that beat Wall Street estimates as the company said it was divesting part of its mainstream and premium wine portfolio.
On the commodities front, U.S. crude oil futures sustained a gain of more than 10% this week after OPEC+ on Wednesday approved its heftiest production cut since 2020 – of 2 million barrels a day – after U.S. officials tried and failed to lobby against the move.
"These higher oil prices certainly prevent gasoline prices from continuing their seasonal drop during the winter," Lipow Oil Associates President Andrew Lipow told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday. "The consumer at the gas pump is already going to be seeing the impact over the next couple of weeks."
Early in the day, data from the Labor Department showed a jump in the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment insurance last week. Initial jobless claims rose sharply to 219,000 for the week ended Oct. 1 after sliding to 193,000, the lowest since April in the prior week. Economists had estimated 203,000 claims, according to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.