U.S. stock futures rose slightly before the bell as Wall Street looked to end a volatile week on a high. Futures linked to the S&P 500 (ES=F) rose 0.2%, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq (NQ=F) rose 0.3%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) rose slightly, 0.1%.
Markets are nearing the end of the most volatile week of the 2024 campaign. Monday saw the worst loss of the year and Wall Street’s “fear gauge” — the CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX) — rose to its highest levels since the pandemic.
On Thursday, a reassuring look at the labor market — in the form of the normally routine weekly jobless claims report — gave investors reason to buy again. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both rose more than 2%, with the S&P posting its best day since late 2022 — a remarkable performance given the breadth of the 2024 rally overall.
Ultimately, with a modest rally on Friday, the major indexes could end the week close to where they started. After Thursday’s session, the benchmark S&P 500 was down about 0.5% from last Friday’s close. All the more reason, as many strategists told Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman in the Morning Brief newsletter, to remain calm amid the chaos.
Friday is a quiet day, with no major economic releases or earnings on the agenda. In individual moves, Nvidia (NVDA) will be in the spotlight again after its own wild swings this week. Shares were up slightly in premarket trading. Meanwhile, Paramount (PARA) shares rose more than 5% after it announced its first-ever streaming earnings and said it planned layoffs over the next year.
