US stocks closed softer on Thursday as a valiant effort by oil prices to rally was not enough to cancel out a slew of poor labour market data and retail sector bad news which upset investors.
Only the Nasdaq Composite was able to be cheerful - striking a fresh record high.
As well as weaker-than-forecast private sector non-farm ADP data, the ISM non-manufacturing employment index dropped to 53.8 in December from 58.2 – albeit a figure above 50.0 still means expansion - and Challenger job cuts in December were 33,600, up from 26,900 the previous month.
Conversely, the US oil benchmark WTI was up 1% at $53.80.
The S&P 500 ended down 0.08% at 2269, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.2% lower at 19.899 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite managed to stay above water, up 0.2% at 5,487. Intraday, it hit 5,495.85 - a record high.
The top Nasdaq stock, as typified by the Nasdaq 100 index, was Alexion Pharm Inc (NASDAQ:ALXN), up 9.5% at $139.18 after affirming its full year 2016 outlook and finally filing its Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the three quarters ended Sep 30, 2016. Shares of the company gained approximately 5% on Jan 4, during the after-hours trading session.
Alexion was also the top S&P 500 riser too.
But it was retailers with some bad news and the risk of Macy’s (NYSE:M) beng downgraded by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s that rattled the retail sector. The top faller was Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS) down 19% to $42.01, followed by Macy’s down 13.9% to $30.86.
Half of the high street dominated the rest of the ten biggest fallers on the S&P 500, with names including Signet Jewelers (NYSE:SIG), L Brands (NYSE:LB), Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) and Urban Outfitters (NYSE:URBN).
The S&P Midcap 400 ended down 0.7% at 1683 and led by Gartner Inc (NYSE:IT) down 11% to $90.56 after it agreed to buy CEB (NYSE:CEB) up 20.9% to $74.85.
The S&P Smallcap 600 was down a heavy 1.4% to 845 and led by Cato Corp (NYSE:CATO) down 14.3% to $26.73.