(Reuters) -U.S. stock index futures held steady on Thursday as investors awaited the monthly jobs report for insights on the health of the labor market and the Federal Reserve’s plans for monetary easing.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at record highs after Wednesday’s choppy session, boosted by gains in technology stocks and a trade agreement between the United States and Vietnam that eased concerns about prolonged trade tensions.
The blue-chip Dow closed 1.3% below all-time highs touched in December.
All eyes are on the nonfarm payrolls report for June, which is scheduled to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET (1230 GMT) – a day ahead of schedule because the U.S. markets are closed on July 4 for Independence Day. Trading volumes are expected to be light, with markets closing early, at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday.
The data is expected to show the U.S. labor market slowed further in June, with the unemployment rate expected to have edged up to more than a three-and-a-half-year high of 4.3%, as economic uncertainty stemming from the Trump administration’s policies curbed hiring.
“Chair (Jerome) Powell, leading the camp for the Fed to keep rates on hold, argues that sticky inflation and a solid labor market mean that the policy rate should be kept mildly restrictive,” ING analysts said in a note.
“Clearly, any downside surprise in the jobs report would weaken his (Powell’s) position and allow the market to push on with pricing a rate cut at the July meeting.”
Traders are attaching a 25% chance of the U.S. Federal Reserve cutting rates at the July meeting, according to CME Group’s Fedwatch tool, up from about 20% a week ago.
U.S. stocks dipped briefly on Wednesday after data showed private payrolls fell in June for the first time in more than two years.
Other economic data on Thursday includes weekly jobless claims and the S&P Global and ISM services sector activity readings for June.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives advanced President Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut and spending bill toward a final yes-or-no vote, appearing to overcome internal party divisions over its cost.
The legislation is expected to add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade, according to nonpartisan analysts.
By 5:49 a.m. ET (0949 GMT), S&P 500 e-minis were up 4 points, or 0.06%, Nasdaq 100 e-minis climbed 24.25 points, or 0.11%, and Dow e-minis added 30 points, or 0.07%.
Shares of chip design software firms Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems climbed 6.7% and 5.9%, respectively, in premarket trading after the U.S. lifted export restrictions on chip design software to China, signaling a thaw in trade tensions between the world’s top two economies.
Tripadvisor climbed 4.9% after the Wall Street Journal reported activist investor Starboard Value had built a more than 9% stake in the online travel firm.
Datadog jumped 10.2% after the cloud security firm was set to replace Juniper Networks on the S&P 500.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
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