By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened lower on Friday after a modestly better-than-expected jobs report for July failed to allay concerns that the economic recovery may be stalling.
The U.S. created 1.763 million jobs in the month through mid-July, down from a revised 4.791 million in June. While that was marginally stronger than the 1.60 million average forecast, and while it was a relief after an alarmingly weak report on private payrolls from ADP earlier in the week, it still pointed to a clear loss of momentum in the labor market last month, when a surge of Covid-19 infections across the south and west of the U.S. forced a number of states to freeze or even partially reverse their economic reopening plans.
By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 73 points, or 0.3%, at 27,314 points. The S&P 500, which has closed in this week on a new all-time high, retreated 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.2%.
The jobs report was unable to lift the gloom created by President Donald Trump's latest blast at China and by the failure of lawmakers in Washington DC to agree on a new round of relief measures for the economy, most importantly the extension of unemployment benefits for the millions who have last their jobs since March.
Trump on Thursday had raised tensions with China again on Thursday by banning U.S. residents from interacting with ByteDance, the owner of the TikTok app, on security grounds. He also issued a similar ban on the WeChat messaging app, which is owned by U.S.-listed Tencent Holdings (OTC:TCEHY). Tencent ADRs fell 7.0% in early trading.
Other Chinese ADRs also fell after a Trump administration panel recommended that Chinese companies be forced to delist if they don't open their books to U.S. auditors. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) ADRs and Nio (NYSE:NIO) ADRs both fell 4.0%.
Another stock under pressure was Uber (NYSE:UBER), which reported a widening loss in the second quarter as its booming food delivery business failed to compensate for a 75% drop year-on-year in bookings for its core ride-hailing business. The Uber Eats business, which has become more and more essential to CEO Dara Khosroshahi's growth narrative, is still not profitable, but Khosroshahi stuck to his revised target of breaking even on an adjusted EBITDA level by the end of next year. Uber stock fell 5.1%.
The biggest gainers included Zillow (NASDAQ:ZG) stock, which rose 15% to a five-year high as the online realtor reported better-than-expected numbers for the second quarter.