U.S. stocks tumble with tech sinking on trade woes

U.S. stocks plunged, with technology shares again bearing the worst of the selling as the Trump administration pressed its trade war with China and the latest batch of economic data added to concern that growth has peaked. Oil surged after OPEC agreed to cut output.

The S&P 500 tumbled more than 500 points and is on course for a weekly rout of 4.4 percent, which would be the worse on a closing basis since March. Stocks fell to session lows after breaching the 2,650 level that had stopped earlier declines. Trade remained in focus, with investors monitoring a court appearance by a Huawei executive whose arrest was seen as a blow to the China-U.S. trade truce. The Federal Reserve's Lael Brainard struck a hawkish tone in comments at a conference.

Stocks had opened higher after the November jobs report showed moderation in the labor market, giving succor to proponents for a slower pace of Fed interest-rate increases. Treasuries fluctuated on the data before settling higher as risk aversion increased. The dollar remained lower.

"After coming off craziness yesterday, it's really a time to look ahead," said Joe "JJ" Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. "I still fear the last half hour or so only because any weakness in the last half hour and you could see some selling into the close as people want to take off risk into the weekend."

U.S. payrolls and wages rose by less than forecast in November while the unemployment rate held at the lowest in almost five decades. The report comes with financial markets on edge over whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell is closer to pausing. Market-implied U.S. rate expectations have been sinking amid the tumult in equities, but hawkish views still exist among Fed officials, including Powell. He delivered a bullish assessment of the U.S. economy and the job market Thursday night.

"It was a Goldilocks report," said Alec Young, managing director of global markets research at FTSE Russell. "Weak enough to convince investors the Fed can slow their tightening, but strong enough not to get people more worried about a recession."

Away from jobs and rates, markets have are closely watching developments in the U.S. trade war with China. Trump tweeted Friday that talks are "going very well," though he supplied no details.

In Europe, stocks rebounded from the worst day in more than two years, while Asian shares posted modest gains as investors sought to end a bruising week on a more upbeat note. Italian debt climbed as European bonds largely drifted. The pound was steady as U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was said to be weighing a plan to postpone the vote on her Brexit deal.

Oil rallied after OPEC broke an impasse over production curbs, agreeing on a larger-than-expected cut with allies after two days of fractious negotiations in Vienna. The cartel and its partners agreed to remove 1.2 million barrels a day from the market, with OPEC itself shouldering 800,000 barrels of the burden. Cryptocurrencies continued their slide with a fresh bout of losses after U.S. regulators dashed hopes that a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund would appear before the end of this year.

These are the main moves in markets:

Stocks:

- The S&P 500 fell 2.2 percent as of 2:04 p.m. in New York, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 2.2 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index erased 2.7 percent.

- The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.8 percent.

- The U.K.'s FTSE 100 rallied 1.4 percent.

- Germany's DAX Index gained less than 0.1 percent.

- The MSCI Emerging Market Index climbed 0.4 percent.

- The MSCI Asia Pacific Index increased 0.2 percent.

Currencies:

- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1 percent.

- The euro gained 0.2 percent to $1.1392.

- The British pound weakened less than 0.2 percent to $1.2751.

- The Japanese yen gained less than 0.1 percent to 112.65 per dollar.

Bonds:

- The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries dropped one basis point to 2.88 percent. The three-year note yield fell one basis point to 2.75 percent as the yield on the five-year note dropped two basis points to 2.73 percent.

- Germany's 10-year yield rose two basis points to 0.25 percent.

Commodities:

- West Texas Intermediate crude jumped 4.2 percent to $53.63 a barrel.

- Gold rose 0.7 percent at $1,246 an ounce.

- LME copper climbed 1.1 percent to $6,136 per metric ton, the first increase in four days.