U.S. stock futures remained at near-record highs on Friday as Wall Street returned from vacation and ahead of a key monthly jobs report that will factor into the Federal Reserve’s rate cut calculations.
S&P 500 (ES=F) futures were little changed after a record end to a shortened session Wednesday and Thursday’s close ahead of the July 4 holiday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) also clung to the flatline, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose modestly, up 0.1%.
Investors are bracing for the June jobs report due at 8:30 a.m. ET, wary of a loosening labor market. The report is expected to show nonfarm payrolls growth slowed to 190,000 in June and the unemployment rate held steady at 4%.
Signs of looser conditions in data earlier this week have bolstered the view that inflation will continue to cool, giving the Fed a chance to cut rates from their current two-decade highs. Traders are now pricing in a nearly 75% chance of a cut in September, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool.
The key question in Friday’s jobs numbers is whether the slowing monthly job growth is a sign of the labor market normalizing as the pandemic subsides, or whether it is the first signs of a broader economic slowdown, Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer reports.
Elsewhere, the Labour Party’s landslide victory in the UK election has caught the attention of investors monitoring the political risk in the US presidential race. As major donors urge President Joe Biden to step aside, all eyes are on Donald Trump’s growing lead and what that could mean for markets.
The AI boom helped Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) see quarterly profit soar to 15 times its year-ago level, pushing the stock to its highest level in three years.
At the company level, crypto-linked stocks Coinbase Global (COIN) and Marathon Digital (MARA) lost about 6% in pre-market trading as bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell to its lowest level against the dollar since February.
