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Stock market today: S&P 500 futures hold near record as jobs data lands
US stock futures held near all-time highs on Friday as investors weighed the June jobs report, which will play into Federal Reserve rate cut calculations.
S&P 500 (ES=F) futures were little changed on the heels of the report, after notching a record close in a shortened session on Wednesday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) and contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) also hovered above the flatline. All three gauges were shuttered on Thursday for the Fourth of July holiday.
The US economy added 206,000 jobs in June, more than the 190,000 expected on Wall Street. But the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose slightly to 4.1%, its highest level since November 2021, in another sign the jobs market continues to cool.
Signs of looser conditions in labor data earlier this week 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.
Investors are puzzling over Friday’s jobs data to decide whether slowing monthly job growth reflects a normalization in the labor market as it shakes off the pandemic, or marks the early signs of a broader economic slowdown.
Elsewhere, the Labour Party’s landslide win in UK elections attracted attention from investors monitoring political risk, particularly as the US presidential election nears. With some key donors urging President Joe Biden to step aside, eyes are on Donald Trump’s growing lead in the polls 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 premarket trading as bitcoin (BTC-USD) sank to its lowest against the dollar since February.
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