US stocks surge after strong employment report but economy may have seen its best

US stocks surged on Friday.

The S&P 500 jumped 2.1 percent after a report showed that the US economy added 211,000 jobs in November, more than economists had forecasted.

Other stock markets did not perform as well on Friday. The STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.4 percent while China’s stocks fell for the first time in five days, with the Shanghai Composite Index retreating 1.7 percent.

Despite the unexpectedly strong jobs data, the US 10-year Treasury yield fell four basis points to 2.27 percent.

That perhaps did not surprise Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered’s chief economist. After raising its interest rate this month for the first time since 2006, he thinks that the Federal Reserve will be cutting again before the end of 2016.

“We’ve seen the best for the U.S. economy,” Maratheftis told Bloomberg Television this week. “The Fed will actually be forced to cut.”

In contrast, the median expectation of economists polled by Bloomberg is for the Fed to raise its benchmark rate to 1.25 percent from near zero by the end of next year.