By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened modestly lower on Friday, but pared overnight losses on the back of a stronger-than-expected labor market report.
By 9:35 AM ET (1435 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 94 points, or 0.3%, at 28,296 points. The S&P 500 was down 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.6%. They're all still on course for solid gains over the week, however, buoyed by the prospect that a split Congress will be unable to push through some of the Democratic Party's less market-friendly ideas.
Just before the opening, stocks had spiked on a Fox News report - so far unconfirmed - suggesting that President Donald Trump was preparing to concede defeat in the presidential election on the advice of his team. However, a statement from the Trump campaign indicated the opposite, saying that the election was "not over", pointing to the likely need for recounts in certain states and again repeating allegations of electoral fraud.
"The false projection of Joe Biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final," the Trump campaign said in a statement.
Trump's legal challenges so far have largely been thrown out by state courts. Biden, meanwhile, had crept into the lead in the late stages of vote-counting in both Georgia and Pennsylvania, all but clinching victory in the presidential election.
"Although there may be some passing concerns with respect to a contested result, the reality is that the U.S. election is now behind us," said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer of BlueBay Asset Management in London. "It would appear that investors have wanted to ‘buy the dip’, but have been left to chase the market as a dip has failed to materialize."
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock lost 2.4% and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock lost 2.6%, trimming the gains they made in the immediate aftermath of the election.
Earlier, the Labor Department had reported unambiguously positive news in saying the U.S. economy created 638,000 nonfarm jobs in October - more than the 600,000 expected and decidedly more than the 365,000 reported by payrolls processor ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) earlier in the week.
One standout winner was Uber (NYSE:UBER) stock, which rose 3.6% to its highest in 16 months, extending gains on the back of Tuesday's crucial ballot win in California and undeterred by another big quarterly loss that it reported after the close on Thursday.
A clear loser was video games maker Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA), which fell 10.4% after reporting that sales and earnings both fell on the year in the last three months.