Investors and traders anxiously waiting for Friday’s jobs report.
Here are 4 tips for today's trading. This will help you decide where you should invest and what to look for:
1. Jobs report ahead
1. Jobs report ahead
Investors are preparing for the first U.S. employment report of the Trump era.
Labor Department officials will release the January jobs report at 13:30 GMT.
It's one of the most important measures of the U.S. economy and the results are known to cause markets to swing.
Economists forecast the country added 175,000 jobs in January and that the unemployment rate will remain unchanged at 4.7%.
Trump has slammed the jobs numbers in the past, saying the unemployment rate data was a hoax. The data is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a wing of the Labor Department. The formula for the unemployment rate hasn't changed in years.
2. Global market overview
2. Global market overview
The dollar recovered from 12-week lows but was poised for a fourth straight weekly loss in cautious trading on Friday ahead of U.S. payrolls data while a set of healthy corporate results underpinned gains across European equity markets.
U.S. stock futures are edging up.
European markets are all positive in early trading. However, global mining firms are seeing their shares slump a bit, which is holding back the indexes.
Asian markets are mostly closing with small losses.
This follows a relatively calm trading session on Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average was flat, while the S&P 500 moved up 0.1% and the Nasdaq dipped 0.1%.
3. Market movers
3. Market movers
Shares in Visa were higher in extended trading after the firm reported strong earnings on Thursday.
But investors were unimpressed with the earnings from Amazon, GoPro, FireEye and HanesBrands. Shares in these companies are set to drop at the open. FireEye shares are down by about 19% premarket.
Meanwhile, more earnings are coming through on Friday morning from Clorox, Hershey Foods, Honda Motors and Phillips 66.
4. Trump meets his CEO team
4. Trump meets his CEO team
The new president is scheduled to meet with a group of influential CEOs he's tapped to share their views on the economy.
The group, dubbed the Strategic and Policy Forum, is led by Blackstone boss Stephen Schwarzman and includes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has pulled out of the group.
