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Stock futures were sluggish in after-hours trading on Thursday, after market nervousness culminated in a four-day losing streak, highlighting how increasingly cautious investors are about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
During Thursday’s regular session, Wall Street posted a fourth consecutive day of losses. Traders are struggling to reconcile a seemingly hot job market with soaring coronavirus infections that have dampened the momentum of the recovery.
As COVID-19-related deaths and hospitalizations skyrocket due to the more contagious Delta variant, President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a broad set of warrants designed to entice hesitant citizens to get vaccinated.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index have now fallen four days, but the technology-based Nasdaq has performed slightly better, having fallen for two days in a row. Investors are in a bad mood since August employment data well below market expectations last week, dampening hopes for the fourth quarter and starting September in difficult conditions.
“You look at the markets and they’ve been incredibly calm and we think September is a good time for a pullback,” G Squared Wealth CFA CIO Victoria Greene told Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday. “We’re sort of in a purgatory.
However, at least 2 employment data this week painted a different picture than the August non-farm payroll. Data from the Ministry of Labor showed open jobs hit another record high, with workers leaving their jobs in droves and nearly 11 million unfilled positions. And Thursday, new claims for unemployment benefits set a new era of pandemic at 310,000, temporarily allaying fears about the economy.
On Thursday, Biden ordered all companies with more than 100 employees to require workers to be vaccinated or tested weekly, and said his intention to require all federal employees to be vaccinated. And a growing number of private employers are already imposing vaccination mandates, even as many postponed return-to-office plans as the Delta variant presents itself.
“We have been patient, but our patience is running out,” Biden said, addressing the number of vaccine resistant – many of whom have flooded hospitals across the country. “And your refusal has cost us all.”
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6:25 p.m. ET Thursday night: mixed equity futures
Here’s where the markets were trading during the after-hours session:
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S&P 500 Futures Contracts (ES = F): 4882.75, -0.25
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Dow Futures (YM = F): 34 877, +7.00
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Nasdaq Futures (NQ = F): 15 566, +6.00
Through Javier E. David, editor at Yahoo finance. Follow him on @Teflongeek
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