CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Record Highs For S&P 500 And Nasdaq Following The November Jobs Report, Lululemon & HPE Top S&P Leaderboard, Amazon Hits All-Time High

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

The latest in business, financial, and market news and how it impacts your money, reported by CNBC's Peter Schacknow

I'm Peter Schach, now to CNBC. Wall Street finished a mostly higher Friday session, with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing at record highs. The Dow fell 123 points to close at 44,643, but the S&P 500 added 15 points, or a quarter percent, and the Nasdaq jumped eight-tenths of a percent, or 159 points. The big data point of the day was the November employment report, which showed the U.S. economy adding a better-than-expected 227,000 jobs last month, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.2 percent. Bill Egan, chief investment officer at J.P. Morgan's Absolute Return Fixed Income Group, says conditions are such that he's wondering

why the Fed continues to cut interest rates. We're growing at 3.2 percent this quarter, just grew at 3 percent. Inflation dropped to the mid twos, now it's turning up into the threes. You've got equity market at all time highs up 30 percent. OK, I guess the Fed's tightening, right? No, they're going the other way. They're cutting into an accelerating economy with inflation turning up. And I look at that and it kind of reminds me of when they started tightening. They waited until inflation was at 6 to 7 percent before they started tightening.

And now they're easing into this environment that's pretty favorable. Policymakers next meet on December 17th and 18th. Lululemon led the S&P 500 with a gain of 16 percent, following better than expected quarterly earnings for the maker of athletic apparel and leisure wear. A similar story for the next two names on the leaderboard, computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise up 11 percent and cosmetics retailer Ulta Beauty up 9 percent. Amazon rose 3 percent and hit an all-time high after B of A named it a top pick for 2025 as profit margins expand. Peter Schach now, CNBC. Driven by money, power, and faith, Cities of Success, Salt Lake City premieres December 10th and Eastern, CNBC.