Global indices were again a sea of red and Wall Street shares opened sharply lower as the US non-farm number triggered mixed reactions.
It showed 173,000 new jobs were created in America last month. This was fewer (weaker) than expected but the figure is likely to be revised upwards in coming weeks and the sentiment appeared to generally be that it was a positive report.
That didn't seem to appeal to investors. The Dow Jones opened almost 240 points lower at 16,138, while the tech heavy Nasdaq lost 45 points to head to 4,688.
The S&P500 index opened 25 points lower at 1,926, while across the Pond in London, Footsie trailed 124 points lower.
On today's key jobs report, economists had been expecting 217,000 new positions to have been created, so it fell short of that but significantly, the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in seven years, to 5.1% from 5.3% -a bigger drop than the Street had expected.
Some say it all comes together to suggest a rate rise will happen while others policy makers have suggested markets and a weakening Chinese growth outlook, muddy the argument for a hike as soon as this month.
In contrast, in Canada, 12,000 jobs were added in August, but the unemployment rate tacked up to 7% as a significant numbers are looking for work. Before last month, the unemployment rate had been fairly steady since January, at 6.8%.
Over the last 12 months, Canada's economy has added 193,000 jobs, Statistics Canada said in a release Friday.
"The steady unemployment rate hides a more complicated picture in the Canadian economy. With GDP shrinking slightly across the year, today’s figures could be seen as a small win for Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz," said Dennis de Jong, managing director at UFX.com
Turning to stocks, Kilobits Parma (NASDAQ:KBIO) was the biggest gainer on Nasdaq, adding over 49%. Clothing brand GAP was down 1.73% at US$32.46 as its August sales stats disappointed.
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) dropped in morning trade as the online retail giant said its cloud-computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) agreed to acquire video-encoding company Elemental Technologies for an undisclosed amount. Shares lost 0.6% to US$501.68.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) fell further, shedding 1.32% even as Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated its ‘buy’ rating on the video-streaming company
On the winning front, Blackberry (Blackberry (NASDAQ:BBRY, TSE:BB), advanced 1.07% in New York trade after the Canadian smartphone maker agreed to buy its rival mobile security software maker Good Technology for $425mln in cash.