Wall St slides on oil, jobs

Trader Anthony Riccio works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. File photo / AP

Wall Street fell, erasing earlier gains, as oil slid and a record number of US job openings made investors wonder if the US Federal Reserve might raise interest rates next week after all.

Oil slid, pushing both West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude more than 3 percent lower, amid concern about excess supply.

In New York trading at about 3.15pm, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.6 percent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 0.7 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index slid 0.4 percent.

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Slides in shares of Chevron and those of Procter & Gamble, last down 2 percent and 1.4 percent respectively, led the Dow lower.

"Investors are still looking for policy developments out of China, and also wary of what might come out of the Fed next week," Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama, told Reuters.

A Labor Department report showed job openings rose more than expected to a record in July, climbing by 430,000 to 5.75 million.

"The number of job openings now signals that the labour market is unable to supply the people companies need," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in Newcastle, UK, said in a research note, according to Bloomberg. "Usually, that means wages will accelerate, though the evidence for that now is mixed."

The report followed last week's disappointing non-farm payrolls report, complicating bets as to whether US Federal Reserve policy makers will decide to raise rates when they meet next week.

"I think the Fed will go this year," Craig Collins, managing director of rates trading at Bank of Montreal in London, told Bloomberg. "September is becoming less and less likely, but I think they will move 25 basis points between now and the end of the year."

As expected, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone model, a bigger iPad, and a new TV device. The stock last traded 0.9 percent lower.

US Treasuries gained. The Treasury's US$21 billion sale of 10-year notes drew healthy demand, which also bodes well for Thursday's auction of US$13 billion of 30-year bonds.
"The long end of the yield curve has been beaten pretty badly lately and real money investors found some value here," Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jeffries & Co, told Reuters.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index ended the day with a 1.3 percent advance from the previous close. Germany's DAX Index increased 0.3 percent, while France's CAC 40 Index rose 1.4 percent, as did the UK's FTSE 100 Index.