After a nice three-day run going back to last Friday's session, the stock market today is down following dreary statements from Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank.
Speaking at a press conference Thursday morning, Draghi commented that the Eurozone would recover gradually and offered little optimism for the region.
"The risks surrounding the economic outlook for the euro area continue to be on the downside,"Draghi said at the news conference. "We see now weakening spots of growth in the whole of euro area including countries that had not experienced that before."
The ECB lowered its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage point to 0.75% and lowered its deposit rate to zero. The People's Bank of China also cut several key interest rates for the second time in less than a month, bringing its lending rate down by 0.31 percentage point to 6%.
The Bank of England decided to enact stimulus measures through quantitative easing, increasing asset purchases by 50 billion euros ($78.1 billion).
Domestically better-than-expected job reports were released, showing the fewest layoffs in 13 months and fewer initial unemployment claims filed than in the previous week.
For the week ended June 30, about 374,000 initial jobless claims were filed, down 14,000 from the previous week. ADP employment numbers showed that 176,000 private jobs were added last week.
This number is a preview to unemployment numbers to be released tomorrow by the Labor Department. Economists expect jobs to be added in the range of 80,000 - 100,000, factoring in government layoffs.
These positive labor numbers follow very weak manufacturing reports issued earlier this week and a poor reading from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) on U.S. non-manufacturing businesses. The ISM services index fell to 52.1 in June from the prior month's 53.7.
These numbers keep the volatile trend of the markets going as investors go back and forth from hope to worry over European and domestic concerns.
Some notable headline-makers in the stock market today include Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL).
The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) is hoping for a boost to sales next week as it attends the Farnborough International Airshow, starting July 9 in Farnborough, England.
Boeing, the world's second-largest aircraft maker, is hoping to surpass Airbus at next week's air show when it shows off its Max 737. The model has been revamped, includes a new engine and Boeing hopes it can help the company regain dominance in the single-aisle aircraft market.
Airbus dominated last year's show in Paris with its Neo plane which has sold 1,425 since it debuted in December 2010.
Boeing has 451 orders for the Max which was unveiled last August and expects to have more than 1,000 orders by the end of 2012. Analysts are expecting Boeing to outsell Airbus at this year's show but many expect fewer orders than the 441 jet purchases at the 2011 Paris show.
"The dream scenario for Boeing at Farnborough is to firm up a couple of hundred 737 MAX orders and then move onto the offensive with widebodies," Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at aerospace research firm Teal Group, told Reuters.
Boeing stock was up 0.27% as of noon.
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) stock is doing well after reports were leaked regarding production of a "iPad mini."
According to officials at one of Apple's component suppliers in Asia, Apple officials told them to prepare for mass production of a smaller tablet. Two of the officials, who declined to be named, said the screen would be smaller than 8 inches, much smaller than the current 9.7-inch screen.
Apple has a dominant position in the tablet market, but that market share has come under pressure as competitors Microsoft and Google recently unveiled tablets of their own.
Apple stock was up 2.03% by noon on the mini iPad rumors.
The Dow Jones today was down 25 points, or 0.19%, and the S&P 500 was down 4 points or 0.29% as of noon.
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