US stock futures held near all-time highs on Friday as Wall Street returned from a holiday break, ahead of the key monthly jobs report that will play into Federal Reserve rate-cut calculations.
S&P 500 (ES=F) futures were little changed following a record end to a shortened session Wednesday and Thursday’s shutdown for the Fourth of July holiday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) also clung to the flatline, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) edged up 0.1%.
Investors are bracing for the June jobs report due at 8:30 a.m ET, on the alert for softening in the labor market. The report is expected to show nonfarm payrolls growth slowed to 190,000 rise in June and that the unemployment rate held steady at 4%.
Signs of looser conditions in data earlier this week have bolstered the idea that inflation will keep cooling, setting the stage for the Fed to lower interest rates from their current two-decade high. Traders are now pricing in a nearly 75% chance of a cut in September, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
The key question in Friday’s jobs data is whether slowing monthly job growth reflects a normalization in the labor market as it shakes off the pandemic, or the early signs of a broader economic slowdown, Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer reports.
Elsewhere, the Labour Party’s landslide win in UK elections attracted attention from investors monitoring political risk in the US presidential race. As key donors urge President Joe Biden to step aside, eyes are on Donald Trump’s growing lead and what that could mean for markets.
Boosted by the AI boom, Samsung Electronics’ (005930.KS) quarterly profit surged to 15 times the size of a year ago, lifting the stock to a three-year high.
On the corporate front, crypto-linked stocks Coinbase Global (COIN) and Marathon Digital (MARA) lost around 6% in pre-market trading as bitcoin (BTC-USD) sank to its lowest against the dollar since February.
