Stocks finish holiday-shortened session with losses

The major U.S. stock indexes finished Tuesday’s session with losses – with the Dow and S&P 500 erasing earlier gains in the afternoon while the Nasdaq flipped from positive to negative shortly after trading commenced and its losses accelerated in the afternoon.

U.S. equity markets will remain closed on Wednesday in observance of Independence Day. When traders return from their break, the next major market moving piece of economic data will be the June jobs report, which the Commerce Department will release on Friday.

Ticker Security Last Change Change %
I:DJI DOW JONES AVERAGES 44296.51 +426.16 +0.97%
SP500 S&P 500 5969.34 +20.63 +0.35%
I:COMP NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX 19003.651134 +31.23 +0.16%

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect that the U.S. economy added 195,000 jobs in June while the unemployment rate should hold steady at 3.8%, the lowest since April 2000. The measure that could garner the most intention is the reading on wage inflation. June wage inflation is expected to rise 0.3%, taking the annual growth rate to 2.8%. This is just below the 2.9% annual clip hit back in January that triggered a market selloff.

Tuesday has also been a volatile session for oil with the commodity swinging between gains and losses.