US stock futures pointed upward Friday, signaling a strong end to a topsy-turvy week on Wall Street amid an onslaught of market-moving events.
Futures tied to the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.6%, while those on the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) lagged, hovering just above the flatline. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) looked to lead gains, rising more than 1%.
Investors are nearing the end of a momentous week, with the final datapoint coming in the form of January’s jobs report. As Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer reports, Wall Street expects a modest decline in job growth last month, as well as a small uptick in the unemployment rate.
The labor market has remained resilient in the face of a rate-hiking campaign from the Federal Reserve, though other data this week has shown signs of softening. Though the Jerome Powell-sparked sell-off of just two days ago is almost a mere footnote by now, Friday’s jobs report could once again shift expectations on the Fed’s rate path, especially as Powell suggested that a strong labor market is actually a good sign.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were still basking in the glow of strong earnings reports from tech giants Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META) on Thursday. As Yahoo Finance’s Hamza Shaban writes, they delivered the goods where Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) had fallen short earlier in the week. Meta surged more than 17% in premarket trading, while Amazon popped nearly 7%.
Apple (AAPL) also looks to have disappointed, despite an earnings beat Thursday, because of warning signs about its China business. Apple fell as much as 2.5% before the market open.
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