Dow up 200, big winning week, blowout jobs number

Stocks moved higher on the final trading day of the holiday-shortened week, fueled by better-than-expected jobs data. The Nasdaq Composite hit a new all-time intraday high, although all the major averages retreated from their highs mid-morning after Florida reported the largest single-day increase in Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began. 

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Despite June’s better-than-expected payrolls numbers, employment may never return to pre-Covid levels in a handful of sub-industries. The long-term, nationwide pivot toward e-commerce had already put pressure on apparel retail employment, and economists say the coronavirus could act as a sort-of catalyst for employers to cut labor costs permanently. Other sectors, such as leisure and hospitality, and posting more robust rebound in payrolls numbers. Bars and restaurants employed 12.3 million Americans in February 2020, only to see that figure collapse to 6.2 million in April. It’s since rebounded 47% off that low and for June rose to 9.2 million jobs.Curriers and message carriers are among a rare group that have actually seen a net gain in employment since January. — Franck

Goldman Sachs examined the favorite stocks of small investors and how they perform, finding stocks with the highest individual investor activity have underperformed over the following two weeks. “This suggests individual investors may have tried to ‘buy-the-dip’ in individual names, but the stocks have not immediately outperformed,” a Goldman Sachs analyst told clients. Goldman tracked the volume of “small trades” — those less than $2,000 — as a proxy for retail investor participation.  The top decile of stocks being traded by small investors on a given day have been underperforming the broader market by an average of about 1.4% in the week prior and continue to underperform the two weeks following by an average of 1.3%, the firm noted.  “This suggests that either declines in the S&P 500 lead to an increase in individual investor trading or individual investor trading leads to a decline in equity prices,” the firm said. – Fitzgerald

Shares of Moderna slid more than 6% on Thursday after the company’s late-stage trial for a possible Covid-19 vaccine was delayed, according to a report from health-care publication STAT News. The report, which cited an investigator, said the timeframe of the delay remains unknown. In May, Moderna released data from its early-stage trial, which showed the vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies against Covid-19 in at least eight participants. –Lovelace