Stocks recover some losses after tumultuous trading, calls grow for a Fed rate cut

(NEW YORK) — Stocks plummeted on Monday as markets worldwide reckoned with a disappointing jobs report last week that fueled concern of a possible recession.

When markets opened on Monday morning, the S&P 500 fell about 4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped more than 6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell roughly 1,000 points, or nearly 3%.

By the end of the trading day, markets had recovered some of the losses but each of the major stock indexes remained down more than 2%. The S&P 500 fell 3%, suffering its largest loss in a single trading session since 2022.

The market downturn triggered calls for a large interest rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting in September. Some investors voiced an even more urgent request for a rare emergency rate cut as soon as this week.

Japan’s main Nikkei 225 stock index dropped more than 12%, its worst day of trading since 1987.

In early U.S. trading, chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 14%. Apple fell more than 8%.

“Investors are feeling massive pain globally,” Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at investment firm Wedbush, said in a note to clients. U.S. markets, he added, are “trading heavy in the red across the board.”

Employers hired 114,000 workers in July, falling well short of economist expectations of 185,000 jobs added, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on Friday showed. The unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%, the highest level since October 2021.

The unemployment rate has soared this year from 3.7% to 4.3%. That trend has triggered a recession indicator known as the “Sahm Rule,” which says that a rise of 0.5 percentage points in the unemployment rate within a 12-month period typically precedes a recession.

On Sunday, Goldman Sachs economists raised the probability of a U.S. recession in the next year from 15% to 25%.

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