Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened mostly lower on Wednesday, as markets absorbed  a strong-looking report on private-sector hiring that did little to calm nerves about the pace of monetary policy tightening this year.

ADP Payrolls reported that the private sector added 806,000 new jobs between mid-December and early January. However, there was no sign that the recent seasonal Covid-19 infection wave had affected the economy. This was the largest monthly increase since May, which bodes well to Friday’s official labor market report – even though they diverge since the outbreak of the pandemic. 

According to Ian Shepherdson (chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics), “It seems as though December survey Week fell in some of a sweetness, after the Delta wave ended but before the Omicron surge begun.” He sent a note for clients. Shepherdson predicts that December’s nonfarm payrolls numbers will surpass the 424,000 consensus estimate.

In the Markit Services PMI (which was less closely watched), tightness in the labor marketplace was evident. The subindex for input cost reached an all-time high. Many services companies have the highest labor costs.

At 9:45 am ET (1445 GMT), it was practically flat. It lost only 5 points, to 36,795 point. It was also down 0.2%. The, which had underperformed due to rising bond yields putting pressure on tech stocks of ‘long duration’, fell another 0.6%.

After UBS downgraded Salesforce stock to ‘neutral, indicating that software business growth is slowing, concerns about tech valuations became evident. At Tuesday’s close Salesforce trades at 135x 2020 earnings, while Adobe trades at a multiple 55. 

Pinterest (NYSE) stock was the next to fall after Piper Sandler forecasted a solid rebound for the stock by 2022. Pinterest stock gained 2.1%

Beyond Meat Inc Stock (NASDAQ:) gained 5.3% in the first quarter after Yum! Brands (NYSE 🙂 announced it will offer Beyond Meat chicken products at KFC restaurants. 

Uranium Energy (NYSE 🙂 increased 9.5% due to civil unrest in Kazakhstan. This country is one of the largest uranium exporters worldwide. It also saw a rise of 9.5% for Uranium Energy. A subsidiary of the United States has also called for workers to strike in Kazakhstan’s largest onshore oilfield, Tengiz. Chevron . Chevron stock (NYSE:) was not affected by these developments. However, crude oil prices rose 1.6% in reaction to signs that OPEC may fail to deliver its February output increases.