By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 kicked off the second quarter with a win Friday, shrugging off a fresh warning from the bond market of a looming recession as softer job gains in March aren’t expected to knock the Federal Reserve off its path to aggressively tightening monetary policy. 

It rose by 0.3%, while the dropped 0.40% or 139 points. The added 0.29% and the increased 1% were also notable.

The nonfarm payrolls rose 431,000 in February, which was below the consensus expectation of 490,000. However, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, more than anticipated.

The job gains for February were revised higher to 750,000 from 678,000, erasing concerns about the weakness seen in the prior month, and pointing to a labor market that is “showing strong momentum heading into Q2,” Jefferies said in a note.

The forecasts for wage growth at 0.4% were in line with actuality.

“With a solid jobs report and the Fed’s preferred inflation metric pushing to 6.4% as of March, there is little reason why the market should not expect a 50bps hike at the next May FOMC meeting,” Stifel said in a note.

Markets continue to price in aggressive Fed actions, increasing fears that the Fed might slow down growth and cause a recession.

Another warning sign of a possible recession is the inverted yield curve.  The yield of the Treasury bond at 22.428% jumped higher than the Treasury note at 2.360%.

As an inverted yield curve reduces bank lending margins and slows growth, banks stocks have struggled to trim losses.

SVB Financial (NASDAQ;), Fifth Third Bancorp, Regions Financial and Regions Financial were the worst performers in this sector.   

The tech sector was back in the news as many semiconductor stocks tried to get a foothold on Wall Street. After JPMorgan removed Qualcomm from their Analyst Focus List, the stock fell by more than 3 percent.

GameStop’s (NYSE:) gains were erased to trade 1% less after the retailer of video games stated that it will seek support from shareholders at its next shareholder meeting in order to split its stock.

Stocks fell to their lowest quarter in the past two years due to a weak January and February, which offset gains from March. However, the stock market meltdown is likely to continue. “[T]his current equity weakness is a brief pause before extending the rally that began around March 16th,” Janney Montgomery Scott said.