Traders and investors digested reports on the labor market and manufacturing activity on Wednesday, as well as the minutes from the December Fed meeting. The end result, however, was the same, as the three major market benchmarks failed to catch a bid for a second straight session.
On the economic front, job openings in the U.S. slid to a 32-month low of 8.8 million in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was little changed from the prior month's reading of a revised 8.9 million openings. The bad-news-is-good-news Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) suggests that the squeaky-tight labor market is loosening up in response to higher interest rates.
