The stock market found little encouragement to sustain any rebound attempt on the eve of the all-important US jobs report, with major benchmarks finishing solidly lower on Thursday.
Aside from the anxiety that usually precedes those numbers, traders had to digest remarks from a raft of Federal Reserve speakers who sounded unequivocally committed to crushing inflation with rate hikes. The hawkish rhetoric helped push the S&P 500 to its second straight day of losses while lifting the dollar and Treasury yields. Oil topped $88 a barrel.
