New York • The stock market headed higher in early Friday trading following news that U.S. employers added workers at a good clip for the fourth month in a row. Hertz plunged after saying it would need to restate three years of its financial results because of accounting errors.
KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained five points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,945 in the first 45 minutes of trading. The index, which is a benchmark for most investment funds, reached another all-time high the day before. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 48 points, also 0.3 percent, to 16,886, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 14 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,311.
EMPLOYMENT PICTURE: The Labor Department said employers added 217,000 jobs to their payrolls in May. That's down from 282,000 in April but in the range of what economists had expected. The unemployment rate stayed put at 6.3 percent. Wall Street's forecasters had expected it to inch up a notch.
RENTAL REDO: Hertz slumped after the car-rental company said in a regulatory filing that it needs to correct its financial results for the past three years because of accounting errors. Hertz Global Holdings dropped $2.81, or 9 percent, to $27.61.
BIG DEBUT: Arista Networks soared in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Arista raised $225 million from investors in its initial public offering late Thursday, selling more than five million shares at a price of $43 each. The company makes networking equipment for cloud computing and had reportedly delayed its IPO after tech stocks took a beating in April.
Arista's stock jumped $13.52, or 30 percent, to $56.55.
EUROPE: Major European markets climbed Friday. Germany's main stock index, the DAX, rose 0.5 percent, while France's CAC 40 gained 0.8 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.4 percent.
ASIA: By contrast, most Asian markets ended lower. Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed down 0.7 percent. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.5 percent. Japan's Nikkei 225 ended little changed.
BONDS AND COMMODITIES: In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slid to 2.56 percent from 2.59 percent late Thursday. Yields fall when bond prices rise. The price of oil rose 45 cents to $102.92 a barrel.