NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks drifted lower on Thursday as financial markets locked in their final moves before a highly anticipated update coming Friday about the U.S. job market.
The S&P 500 fell 0.5% for its first drop in four days. After sprinting through May and rallying within a couple good days’ worth of gains of its all-time high, the index at the center of many 401(k) accounts has lost momentum.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 108 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8%.
Trading activity in options markets suggests investors believe the next big move for the S&P 500 could come on Friday, when the U.S. Labor Department will say how many more jobs U.S. employers created than destroyed during May. The expectation on Wall Street is for a slowdown in hiring from April.
A resilient job market has been one of the linchpins that’s propped up the U.S. economy, and the worry is that all the uncertainty created by President Donald Trump’s on-and-off tariffs could push businesses to freeze their hiring.
A report on Thursday said more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. The number remains relatively low compared with history, but it still hit its highest level in eight months.
The data came as Procter & Gamble, the giant behind such brands as Pampers diapers and Cascade dish detergent, said it will cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years. Its stock fell 1.9%.
The day’s heaviest weight on the market was Tesla, which tumbled 14.3%. It’s lost nearly 30% of its value so far this year as CEO Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump sours amid a disagreement over the president’s signature bill of tax cuts and spending.
Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve, dropped 17.9% for its worst day since it began trading in 1972.
Its profit and revenue for the latest quarter fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, and the company said it expects its upcoming fiscal year to be challenging because of “consumer uncertainty, the potential impact from currently unknown tariffs” and other things.
The CEO of PVH, which runs the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, likewise cited challenges from “an increasingly uncertain consumer and macroeconomic backdrop.”
Its stock fell 18% even though it reported stronger revenue and profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company cut its profit forecast for its full fiscal year, saying it will likely be able to offset only some of the potential hit it will take because of tariffs.