The last thing stock traders want to see is anything to suggest they are underestimating the weakness in US corporate profits, Bloomberg reported. That may explain their reaction to Friday’s jobs report, which showed American employers added 126,000 workers to payrolls in March, the fewest in more than a year. June e-mini contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index retreated 0.7 percent from their close on April 2 as of 6:15 a.m. in Hong Kong, maintaining most of the 1% decline in abbreviated trading Friday. While investors have been able to live with subpar economic data that potentially delay a Federal Reserve interest rate increase, they have viewed threats to company earnings less charitably.
