Investing.com – Wall Street opened higher on Friday, despite disappointing job creation data.
The S&P 500 rose six points or 0.35% as of 9:52 AM ET (14:52 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 62 points or 0.25% to 25,060.88 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite was up 25 points or 0.36%.
The nonfarm payrolls came in less than expected on Friday, as less jobs were created in December. Non-farm payrolls (NFP) rose to 148,000, compared to the creation of 252,000 posts a month earlier which was revised up from the initial gain of 228,000.
The data missed the consensus estimate for the creation of 190,000 jobs, and was lower than 250,000 that the ADP report indicated earlier. The jobless rate held steady at 4.1%.
Courier company FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) was among the top gainers after the morning bell, rising 1.32%, while Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) rose 0.44% and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) increased 0.44%. General Electric (NYSE:GE) was up 1.21% while Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) gained 0.80%.
Elsewhere semiconductor Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) lost 1.53% and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was down 0.63% as a security flaw in its chips continued to drive a sell off. Meanwhile streaming firm Roku Inc (NASDAQ:ROKU) slumped 7.86% after Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) downgraded the company’s shares.
In Europe stocks rallied. In Germany the DAX rose 134 points or 1.02% while France’s CAC 40 increased 39 points or 0.73% and in London the FTSE 100 gained five points or 0.07%. Meanwhile Spain’s IBEX 35 was up 65 points or 0.64% and the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 surged 27 points or 0.78%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.30% to $1,317.60 a troy ounce while crude oil futures decreased 0.74% to 61.55 a barrel. The U.S dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, rallied 0.20% to 91.78.