U.S. stock futures hovered near record highs on Friday as Wall Street returned from the holiday ahead of a key monthly jobs report that will influence the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut calculations.
S&P 500 futures (ES=F) were little changed after closing at a record high during shortened trading hours on Wednesday and a trading break on Thursday for the Independence Day holiday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) were also flat, while tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ=F) rose 0.1%.
Investors are wary of a weakening labor market and are preparing for the release of the June jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET, which is expected to show that nonfarm payroll growth slowed to 190,000 in June and that the unemployment rate remained steady at 4%.
A trend toward moderation from earlier this week has strengthened expectations that inflation will continue to slow, setting the stage for the Fed to cut interest rates from their current 20-year highs. Traders are now pricing in a nearly 75% chance of a September rate cut, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer reports that the key question coming into Friday’s jobs report is whether the slowdown in monthly employment growth reflects a normalization of the labor market as we emerge from the pandemic, or is an early sign of a broader economic slowdown.
Meanwhile, Labour’s landslide victory in the UK election has caught the attention of investors monitoring the political risks of the US presidential election. With major donors calling for President Joe Biden to step down, attention is focused on Donald Trump’s widening lead and what it means for markets.
Buoyed by the AI ​​boom, Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) quarterly profit surged 15 times from a year earlier and its shares hit a three-year high.
On the corporate front, crypto stocks Coinbase Global (COIN) and Marathon Digital (MARA) fell about 6% in pre-market trading as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell to its lowest since February against the dollar.
