PARIS (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange opened mixed on Thursday, with little change, after the publication of mixed surveys on U.S. employment, which left investors perplexed ahead of the official report on Friday.

In early trading, the Dow Jones index lost 0.15% to 40,914.38 points. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 advanced 0.10% to 5,525.71 points.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.55% to 17,178.53 points.

A little over an hour before Wall Street opened, the monthly survey by the ADP consultancy showed that the private sector in the United States had created fewer jobs than expected in August, or 99,000, the lowest figure in three and a half years.

This is a further sign of the rapid deterioration in the labour market after the monthly Jolts survey on job openings was published on Wednesday, while the official monthly employment report will be released on Friday.

However, weekly unemployment claims in the United States fell last week to 227,000, maintaining a slight hope for employment, even if this indicator is subject to revision.

Investors are concerned that the weakness of the latest macroeconomic data in the United States is a harbinger of a deep recession and not of a soft landing for the economy as hoped so far.

The publication at 1400 GMT of the monthly ISM index of business activity in the services sector, expected to fall to 51.1 in August after 51.4 in July, could also reinforce concerns while the ISM manufacturing index, published on Tuesday, disappointed with its weakness.

The size of the expected rate cut by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) on September 18 could alleviate or reinforce fears of a recession.

“The concern is that the Fed has waited too long to ease monetary policy and now runs the risk of contributing to a hard landing rather than a soft landing,” said David Morrison, a market analyst at Trade Nation.

Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year Treasuries fell more than four basis points to 3.7232%, while the dollar fell 0.31% against a basket of major currencies.

In terms of values, Frontier Communications fell by 9% after the announcement of its acquisition by Verizon (-0.05%) for 20 billion dollars (18.02 billion euros).

Tesla is up 1.53% as the automaker announced it will launch its fully autonomous driving assistance software (FSD) in the first quarter of 2025 in Europe and China.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise fell 8.2% despite raising its annual profit forecast. The chip index fell again, by 0.71% in the wake of concerns over Nvidia, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company.

AI software maker C3.ai plunged 14.4% after missing forecasts for subscription revenue in the quarter ended July 31.

(Written by Claude Chendjou, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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