Wall Street near record high, ASX set to edge up

Microsoft was the S&P 500’s heaviest weight, down 1.6 percent. Nvidia lost only 0.6 percent, but was one of the heaviest weights on the index because it is the most valuable stock on Wall Street.

CrowdStrike fell 0.3 percent, although it beat analysts’ profit expectations. He also entered the day with a big gain and the shares rose to 51 percent.

In the bond market, Treasury yields fell after a report suggested non-government U.S. employers may have cut more jobs than they added in November.

Data from ADP was much weaker than economists expected, but it doesn’t have a perfect track record of predicting what the more comprehensive jobs report the U.S. government releases each month will say.

Wednesday’s data may be discouraging for job seekers, but it also keeps alive expectations that the Fed will cut its key interest rate next week. If the Fed does so, it would be the third cut this year in hopes of stimulating a slowing job market.

A report later in the morning on U.S. service sector activity was more encouraging. Growth last month was stronger than expected for businesses in retail, finance, insurance and other sectors, it said.

Perhaps it was equally important that the Institute for Supply Management’s survey stated that prices increased at the slowest rate since April. This could help the Fed because fear of high inflation is the main argument against lowering interest rates.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.07 percent from 4.09 percent at the end of Tuesday.

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Loosening bond yields could boost prices of all kinds of investments, and Bitcoin is back above $92,000 after its disastrous decline in recent weeks. It briefly fell below $81,000 last month.

In foreign stock markets, following the mixed closing in Asia, indices in Europe remained almost flat.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.1 percent on gains from technology stocks such as Tokyo Electron, which gained 4.7 percent. SoftBank Group Corp. jumped 6.4 percent after reports that its founder Masayoshi Son regretted having to sell shares of computer chip maker Nvidia to help finance other investments.

Chinese indexes fell after the release of data showing weak factory activity. Shares fell 1.3 percent in Hong Kong and 0.5 percent in Shanghai.

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The Market Summary newsletter is a summary of the day’s transactions. Let’s each take ittoday afternoon.