US stocks slip as Wall Street makes its final moves ahead of Friday’s
jobs report
[June 06, 2025] By
STAN CHOE
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks drifted lower on Thursday as financial
markets locked in their final moves before a highly anticipated update
coming Friday about the U.S. job market.
The S&P 500 fell 0.5% for its first drop in four days. After sprinting
through May and rallying within a couple good days’ worth of gains of
its all-time high, the index at the center of many 401(k) accounts has
lost momentum.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 108 points, or 0.3%, and the
Nasdaq composite sank 0.8%.
Trading activity in options markets suggests investors believe the next
big move for the S&P 500 could come on Friday, when the U.S. Labor
Department will say how many more jobs U.S. employers created than
destroyed during May. The expectation on Wall Street is for a slowdown
in hiring from April.
A resilient job market has been one of the linchpins that’s propped up
the U.S. economy, and the worry is that all the uncertainty created by
President Donald Trump’s on-and-off tariffs could push businesses to
freeze their hiring.
A report on Thursday said more U.S. workers applied for unemployment
benefits last week than economists expected. The number remains
relatively low compared with history, but it still hit its highest level
in eight months.
The data came as Procter & Gamble, the giant behind such brands as
Pampers diapers and Cascade dish detergent, said it will cut up to 7,000
jobs over the next two years. Its stock fell 1.9%.
The day’s heaviest weight on the market was Tesla, which tumbled 14.3%.
It’s lost nearly 30% of its value so far this year as CEO Elon Musk’s
relationship with Trump sours amid a disagreement over the president’s
signature bill of tax cuts and spending.
Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve,
dropped 17.9% for its worst day since it began trading in 1972.
Its profit and revenue for the latest quarter fell short of Wall
Street’s expectations, and the company said it expects its upcoming
fiscal year to be challenging because of “consumer uncertainty, the
potential impact from currently unknown tariffs” and other things.
The CEO of PVH, which runs the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands,
likewise cited challenges from “an increasingly uncertain consumer and
macroeconomic backdrop.”
Its stock fell 18% even though it reported stronger revenue and profit
for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company cut its
profit forecast for its full fiscal year, saying it will likely be able
to offset only some of the potential hit it will take because of
tariffs.
Hopes that Trump will lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with
other countries have been among the main reasons the S&P 500 has rallied
back so furiously since dropping roughly 20% from its record two months
ago. It’s now back within 3.3% of its all-time high.
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Traders Jeffrey Vazquez, left, and Thomas Ferrigno work on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP
Photo/Richard Drew)
 Trump boosted such hopes Thursday
after saying he had “a very good phone call” with China’s leader, Xi
Jinping, about trade and that “their respective teams will be
meeting shortly at a location to be determined.”
It’s an easing of tensions after the world’s two largest economies
had earlier accused each other of violating the agreement that had
paused their stiff tariffs against each other, which threatened to
drag the economy into a recession.
To be sure, nothing is assured amid Trump’s on-and-off rollout of
tariffs, and markets took the latest detente with China relatively
coolly.
Among Wall Street’s winners was MongoDB, which jumped 12.8% after
the database company likewise delivered a stronger profit than
analysts expected.
Circle Internet Group, the U.S.-based issuer of one of the most
popular cryptocurrencies, surged 168.5% in its first day of trading
on the New York Stock Exchange.
Five Below climbed 5.6% after the retailer, which sells products
priced between $1 and $5, reported a stronger profit for the latest
quarter than analysts expected. CEO Winnie Park credited broad-based
strength across most of its merchandise
All told, the S&P 500 fell 31.51 points to 5,939.30. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average dropped 108.00 to 42,319.74, and the Nasdaq
composite sank 162.04 to 19,298.45.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held steadier. The yield on the
10-year Treasury rose to 4.40% from 4.37% late Wednesday after
tumbling from 4.46% the day before.
Yields dropped so sharply on Wednesday as expectations built that
the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year
to prop up an economy potentially weakened by tariffs.
In stock markets abroad, indexes in Europe were mixed amid modest
moves after the European Central Bank cut its main interest rate
again, as was widely expected.
The moves were bigger in Asia, where South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.5%
after the country’s new president and leading liberal politician Lee
Jae-myung began his term, vowing to restart talks with North Korea
and beef up a partnership with the U.S. and Japan.
___
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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