Wall Street pointed toward gains early Friday ahead of a report on U.S. employment that is expected to show the economy remains strong despite a prolonged period of high interest rates.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7%.
Later Friday, the U.S. government will report on how many jobs employers added in April.
Economists expect it to show a slowdown in hiring from March. However, a report Thursday showed that fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected in the latest signal that the job market remains solid despite high interest rates.
The U.S. economy is in a tight spot, where the hope is that it remains strong enough to stay out of a recession but not so strong that it worsens the already stalled progress on inflation.
Stubbornly high readings on inflation this year pushed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to say on Wednesday that it will likely take “longer than previously expected” to get enough confidence about inflation to cut interest rates.
In equities trading early Friday, Apple rose 6% after the tech giant raised its dividend and announced a $110 billion share buyback, even as it posted the steepest quarterly decline in iPhone sales since the outset of the pandemic.
Expedia fell 12.2% after the online travel company beat Wall Street targets but lowered its full-year bookings guidance because its Vrbo rental unit has been slow to recover from its migration to Expedia’s platform.
In Europe at midday, Germany’s DAX gained 0.4%, while the CAC 40 in Paris and London’s FTSE 100 each picked up 0.5%.
Markets in Tokyo and mainland China were closed for holidays.
The Japanese yen strengthened slightly against the U.S. dollar amid signs of heavy central bank intervention to tamp down the dollar’s advance.
The financial newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that estimates showed the government spending an estimated 8 trillion yen (about $50 billion) in reserves this week to try to keep the yen from slipping further against the dollar.
The weaker yen has helped boost prices for imported goods, a factor behind the Bank of Japan’s recent decision to give up its negative interest rate policy and raise its benchmark rate to zero to 0.1% from a longstanding level of minus 0.1%. It might raise rates further, Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economics said in a commentary, even if its target of 2% isn’t met.
“Even though the economic case for preventing the yen from sliding is much weaker, the Ministry of Finance seems to have responded with an even more forceful round of foreign exchange interventions this week than it did two years ago,” Thieliant said.
While a weak yen is a boon for Japanese companies that earn much of their revenues overseas, significant shifts in the foreign exchange market can play havoc with corporate planning and a sharply weaker yen also boosts costs for imports of oil and other vital commodities.
The dollar was trading at 153.18 yen early Friday, down from 153.65 late Thursday. The euro rose to $1.0748 from $1.0727.
In Asian trading, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.5% to 18,475.92, tracking gains on Wall Street. News of fresh moves by Chinese leaders to energize the economy also helped drive buying of technology shares.
E-commerce giant Alibaba climbed 4.1% and rival JD.com was up 5.5%. Baidu advanced 4.4%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.6% to 7,629.00 and the Kospi in Seoul slipped 0.3% to 2,676.63. Taiwan’s Taiex picked up 0.5%.
India’s Sensex shed 0.9% to 73,952.37.
On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 0.9%, a day after swinging sharply when the Federal Reserve said it’s likely delaying cuts to interest rates but not planning to hike them. That more than halved its losses for the week. The Dow advanced 0.9% and the Nasdaq composite jumped 1.5%.
In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 35 cents to $79.30 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost 5 cents on Thursday.
Brent crude, the international standard, added 43 cents to $84.10 per barrel.
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