Dow Jones futures were little changed Friday morning, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures, with the July jobs report looming large. Tesla (TSLA) shareholders approved a 3-for-1 stock split Thursday evening.
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The stock market rally closed mixed in a relatively quiet Thursday for the major indexes, but there were some big earnings movers.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Amgen (AMGN) and Neurocrine Biosciences (NBIX) reported better-than-expected earnings Thursday night as biotechs remain a leading sector. All closed near buy points and key support levels.
Early Friday, Amazon.com (AMZN) agreed to buy Roomba maker iRobot (IRBT) for $1.7 billion, or $61 a share. That’s a 22% premium to IRBT stock’s Thursday close of 49.99.
Dow Jones Futures Today
Dow Jones futures climbed 0.2% vs. fair value. S&P 500 futures advanced 0.1% and Nasdaq 100 futures edged lower.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose 2 basis points to 2.7%.
Copper prices rose more than 1%.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., threw her support behind the tax-spending-and-climate bill Thursday night. The legislation will add a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks and remove a provision to end the carried interest loophole. Solar and green energy stocks got another boost, with the legislation likely to pass.
The Labor Department will release the July jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET. The employment data will certainly swing Dow futures and Treasury yields.
Remember that overnight action in Dow futures and elsewhere doesn’t necessarily translate into actual trading in the next regular stock market session.
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Jobs Report
Economists expect to see nonfarm payrolls rise by 250,000 in the July jobs report, down from 372,000 in June. That would still indicate healthy hiring amid a slowing economy.
Keep an eye on the household survey, which showed a notable employment decrease in June. It’s more error prone than payrolls, but often shows labor market turns first.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 3.6%, with annual hourly earnings growth slowing just a tick to 5%.
Jobless claims rose to 260,000 in the latest week, the highest in nine months. Job openings, though still high, have come down rapidly in the past two months.
The Federal Reserve, notably Fed chief Jerome Powell, has argued that a soft landing is possible. Investors over the past couple of weeks are starting to buy into the idea that the economy will weaken just enough to cool inflation sufficiently to spur the Federal Reserve to slow and then halt Fe …