Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — U.S. stock market were generally lower when they opened on Friday. They struggled to keep their cool after being rattled by a labor report suggesting that there would be strong inflationary pressure and wage growth.

The was at 36,199 point by 9:40 ET (1440 GMT) and had dropped 37 points or 0.1%. This is on track to make it a volatile week that ended largely unchanged. Although the gained 0.1%, it was still down 2.9%. The meanwhile, experienced a 3.5% weekly decline, its lowest week in almost a decade. The S&P is set to close the week down 1.6%.

In its previous monthly labor market report, the Labor Department stated that the average hourly wage grew by 0.6% in December. This was faster than 0.4% predicted. The November figure was also higher than expected. That, combined with a sharper-than-expected drop in the unemployment rate, outweighed a second straight miss in the headline job creation figure, which rose by only 199,000, compared to expectations of 400,000.

GameStop (NYSE 🙂 was one stock that jumped 17% in early trading after The Wall Street Journal reported GameStop would be setting up a marketplace to trade non-fungible tokens. This is digital assets, which can often be purchased and sold using digital currencies. The move could open up new revenue streams for the 2021 archetypal meme stock, which otherwise has struggled to sustain the enthusiasm behind its rise early in the year.