By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com -- Tech pushed stocks higher on Thursday, lifting the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to new records as of mid-afternoon.
Chip maker Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM) jumped after it predicted better-than-expected revenue and profit for the current quarter on soaring demand for the chips that power everything from mobile phones to cars.
Video game makers Electronic Arts Inc (NASDAQ:EA) and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (NASDAQ:TTWO) also gained as a boom in demand for games helped each raise its 2021 sales forecasts.
The positive news on earnings comes a day after the Federal Reserve confirmed what everyone was thinking: It will begin the scale back its monthly bond purchases this month, and gradually wind them down through mid-next year. The central bank did hold rates steady, however.
On Friday we get the highly anticipated jobs report for October, a couple of days after a private payroll report and a day after new jobless claims dropping to pandemic lows both showed progress in the labor market.
In addition, there appears to be progress in Washington, where Democrats were trying to firm up support for a possible vote on the social spending and infrastructure packages they have been negotiating for months.
Here are three things that could affect markets tomorrow: Hint, it’s all about the job numbers.
1. How many jobs?
The U.S. economy is likely to have added 450K workers in October, after nonfarm payrolls grew at year’s slowest pace in September, adding only 194K jobs in that month.
Unemployment rate in the U.S. is seen making a new pandemic-low for the second straight month. It is likely to have fallen to 4.7% after going down 4.8% in September. The data are released at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT).
2. Hourly wages
Average hourly earnings in U.S. are likely to have risen 0.4% in October compared to the 0.6% growth in September.
3. DraftKings earnings
DraftKings Inc (NASDAQ:DKNG) third-quarter revenue is seen coming in at $231.5 million with the online sports betting company reporting a loss of 98 cents per share, according to analysts tracked by Investing.com.