By Geoffrey Rogow U.S. stocks swung between slight gains and losses at midday Friday on a bounce for industrial and consumer stocks, offsetting heightened economic concerns as the U.S. unemployment rate pushed to a 26-year high. "There is some push and some pull on the unemployment report," said Craig Peckham, equity trading strategist with Jefferies. "More specifically though, there's a lot of people playing this lower oil, which helps the consumer kind of trade today." The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) recently traded up 2 points to 10,008, just above the psychologically significant 10,000 level. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) was down 0.1% at 1066. The Nasdaq Composite (RIXF) was up less than 0.1%. In the commodities markets, gold rose as high as $1,100.50 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained up to $1,101.90 an ounce in electronic trade. It recently gained $5.20, or 0.5%, to $1,094.50 an ounce. Pacing the stock market's gains for industrials, General Electric (GE) rose 6.9% after Oppenheimer boosted its rating on the stock to outperform from perform, saying the diversified company's financial portfolio is stabilizing. Among stocks to watch, Starbucks (SBUX) rose 4.8% after the company raised its earnings outlook for next year and reported a $150 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit. Declines in the Dow and in the broader market were led by financials and energy firms, including J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and Sunoco (SUN). For energy firms, a more than $2 a barrel drop in oil prices weighed on the sector. Much like the stock market, oil prices were weighed down by the October jobs report. Still, the decline in oil was a boon for consumer stocks, which continued their broad rally from Thursday. Starbucks was particularly strong, up 6.4%, after the coffee retailer raised its earnings outlook for next year and reported a $150 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit. Broadly, the market was weighed down after the Labor Department reported U.S. unemployment rose by more than expected in October and employers cut more jobs than forecast, a sign the labor market continues to struggle as the economy emerges from its deep recession. The jobless rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2%. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast an increase to 9.9%. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 190,000 last month, with the largest job losses in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade. Economists had expected a drop of 150,000. On Wall Street, traders noted some surprise that the morning's declines weren't more severe, especially given the big jump on Thursday. Mark Turner, co-head of sales trading for Instinet, said stocks were getting a lift from transports, which were helped by a decline in oil prices. "And though the headline number on jobs was pretty bad, some of the revision numbers were actually a little better," said Turner. "That's why there wasn't a huge move to the downside." Notably, September's nonfarm payrolls report was revised to a decline of 219,000 jobs from the previously reported 263,000-job decline. Strategist Steve Charest, of Divine Capital Markets in New York, characterized the jobs report as offering neither big disappointments nor sufficient reason for him to abandon his view that the market is due for a correction over the next few months, with major indexes apt to shed perhaps half their gains from the March lows before resuming a trend higher. "In a recession driven by the sort of problems we've seen in the financial sector, you'd expect the unemployment rate to top out around 11%," said Charest. "I try to keep in mind that figure was hit in the early 80's, and aside from high rates breaking the back of inflation, things then were pretty good compared to what we've had recently." In other markets, Treasury prices were mixed, with the 2-year noted up 1.32 to yield 0.860% and the 10-year down 1/16 to yield 3.535%. The dollar fell against both the euro and the yen.
