Good morning! It’s Friday, August 2 and you’re reading the ABC’s markets blog — and I am thrilled to have your company.

Let’s kick things off with a quick look at what happened on Wall Street overnight, where trade wrapped up a short time ago.

US stocks ended sharply lower on Thursday, despite seeing some early gains off the back of Meta (Facebook’s parent company) releasing its quarterly results that surpassed expectations.

But it was the release of some economic data that had investors spooked and saw yesterday’s optimism disappear.

Manufacturing data came in much weaker than expected and fell to an eight month low in July — signalling there’s been a contraction.

That was followed up by the release of weekly jobless data, which showed an increase of 14,000 Americans who filed new applications for unemployment benefits last week, taking the total to 249,000 people.

It’s the largest increase in 11 months, and has prompted concerns that the labour market in the US is softening more than anticipated — although this time of year is known for having a seasonal impact on jobs.

“It raises a genuine fear that the Fed is behind on cutting rates,” Lou Basenese from MDB Capital said.

“Few investors have confidence in the Fed sticking the proverbial soft landing and now the data is starting to support those concerns.”

At the end of trade on Wall Street, all three major indices ended sharply lower: the Dow dropped 1.2%,  the S&P 500 fell by 1.4%, and the Nasdaq shed 2.3%.