In a frenetic trading session, the Nasdaq Composite created a comeback for the history books on Friday.
The high-tech index had been down as much as 2.6% when it hit an intraday nadir at 12,397.05, as data released by the Labor Department on Friday showed a hard recovery was underway. forward in terms of jobs, pushing bond yields abruptly up.
But when the day was out the Nasdaq Composite COMP,
closed higher by 1.6% at 12,920.15, near the peak of the day, marking the deepest return between February 28, when the Nasdaq fell as much as 2.5% and closed 0.1% higher. By another measure the intraday reversal was the largest index since 19 March 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Optimism around the employment picture added to concerns that red-hot technology stocks would decline despite expectations of rising bond yields and inflation, backed by a nonfarm-payrolls report for February.
Read: MarketWatch image of the market
The data showed that the US added 379,000 jobs last month – well above the expected 210,000 – and that the unemployment rate fell to 6.2% from 6.3%.
TMUBMUSD10Y 10-year Financial Note,
short yield jumped to around 1.62%.
The Nasdaq Composite closed trading on Thursday just around 27 basis points from a 10% decline from its most recent peak, on Feb. 12, which met the most common definition for asset correction.
Dow Jones industrial average DJIA,
and S&P 500 SPX index,
they were also trading near session highs after the pair came under significant selling pressure earlier in the session.
Comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday helped steer bond yields significantly higher as they were read as expressing enough concern about inflation as the economy recovers from COVID-19 pandemics , aided by another dose of fiscal stimulus from Washington.