Equities fall with US Treasury yields after data, oil sinks

NEW YORK/ PARIS, (Reuters) – MSCI’s global equities gauge fell on Tuesday and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields were lower for a second day as investors assessed some mixed signals from the latest U.S. jobs report, while oil prices sagged on oversupply worries as hopes increased for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal.

The U.S. Labor Department reported a nonfarm payroll increase of 64,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%. November represented a bounce-back from October’s 105,000 jobs decline, which included the departure of more than 150,000 federal employees who took deferred buyouts as part of the Trump administration’s push to shrink the government’s footprint.

However, the clouding of the data from the 43-day U.S. government shutdown through October and into mid-November created some uncertainty about what the report really means for the economy and the Federal Reserve’s outlook for interest rate policy after its 25-basis-point cut last week.

While relatively low wage growth and anaemic November job creation provided hope for more Fed rate cuts, David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, said the return to job increases in November could also support more hawkish views that rates should hold steady.

“Investors are still trying to digest this data. The jobs report was somewhat Goldilocks – not too bad and not too good. Both hawkish and dovish investors have enough data to prove their current thesis,” Wagner said while also pointing to “the noise in the data given that the shutdown continued into the middle of November.”

While the Fed’s estimate last week was for one rate cut for 2026, traders have been betting on two or more cuts, according to CME Group’sFedWatch, tool.

While bets were little changed after Tuesday’s data, Adam Rich, deputy CIO and portfolio manager at Vaughan Nelson, said that the stock market’s decline suggests concern about the interest rate outlook.

“The market is having a really hard time figuring out how many interest rate cuts we’re going to get from the Fed,” Rich said.

“The jobs data is looking a little stronger than what people were expecting, but it’s also low enough that we could probably get more cuts in the near future than what the market is expecting. But maybe investors were hoping that it would be weaker than expected so that cuts would be coming more aggressively,” he added.

On Wall Street stock indexes ended mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 302.30 points, or 0.62%, to 48,114.26, the S&P 500 fell 16.25 points, or 0.24%, to 6,800.26 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 54.05 points, or 0.23%, to 23,111.46.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe fell 5.04 points, or 0.50%, to 1,002.72, while earlier, the pan-European STOXX 600 index finished down 0.47%.

Earlier, stocks had declined during Asian trading, with MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan  dropping 1.3% and touching its lowest in three weeks.

Investors are still waiting for U.S. inflation data due out on Thursday and central bank rate policy decisions from the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan this week.

U.S. Treasury yields fell on Tuesday on the unexpected increase in the unemployment rate last month, though analysts also noted that the data is less reliable than usual due to government shutdown-related distortions.

The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes fell 3.5 basis points to 4.147%, from 4.182% late on Monday while the 30-year bond yield fell 3.5 basis points to 4.8171%.

The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, fell 2.1 basis points to 3.487%, from 3.508% late on Monday.

In currencies, the U.S. dollar edged lower following the jobs report’s mixed messages.

The dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.04% to 98.22.

The euro was down 0.04% at $1.1747 while against the Japanese yen , the dollar weakened 0.3% to 154.75.

Sterling strengthened 0.33% to $1.3417 although unemployment in Britain hit its highest since the start of 2021 and wage growth in the private sector was the weakest in nearly five years last month, according to the latest data.

In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin gained 1.74% to $87,731.12, erasing some of Monday’s losses.

Oil prices fell, with Brent futures trading below $60 a barrel for the first time since May and settling at their lowest level since February 2021, amid ongoing jitters about the prospect of an oversupply as traders considered a Russia-Ukraine peace deal as more likely, raising expectations that sanctions could be eased.

U.S. crude settled down 2.73%, or $1.55, at $55.27 a barrel while Brent ended at $58.92 per barrel, down 2.71%, or $1.64.

In precious metal markets, gold prices were virtually unchanged as the dollar pared its losses while some traders bet that a rising U.S. unemployment rate would boost the chances for more Fed rate cuts. Spot gold rose 0.01% to $4,302.08 an ounce.