Investing.com – Trading was muted stateside on Friday as investors decided to wait for the publication of the U.S February employment report at 13:30GMT or 8:00AM ET to gleam clues on its possible effect on Federal Reserve (Fed) monetary policy moves.
After Wall Street managed to finish Thursday’s session in the black, investors remained slightly bullish on Friday as the blue-chip Dow futures rose 27 points, or 0.16%, by 12:03GMT, or 7:03AM ET, the S&P 500 futures edged up 3 points, or 0.17%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures gained 12 points, or 0.28%.
Consensus forecast the world’s largest economy to have created 190,000 non-farm payrolls last month with the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 4.9%, less than half the peak reached post-crisis.
After a two-and-a-half-year run in employment creation, investors seemed to hope that the data will show a continuation of the improvement in the U.S. economy while not being strong enough to bring forward Fed plans to continue the tightening cycle on American monetary policy.
Markets expected no move to be made at the March 15-16 policy meeting, but the jobs report will be the last piece of major economic data for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to digest before signaling the future path of interest rates.
The next policy meeting will be particularly key as it will be accompanied by updated economic projections along with a posterior press conference by Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
Along the same lines, as the U.S. stock futures, the dollar was little changed against the other major currencies on Friday. At 12:05AM GMT or 7:05AM ET, EUR/USD rose 0.26% to 1.0985, GBP/USD down 0.16% at 1.4153, and USD/JPY held steady at 113.68.
Contrary to the greenback and stock futures, gold benefitted from investor sentiment and rose around 1% in Friday’s session to hit a 13-month high.
Meanwhile, crude also rose as official U.S. data revealed that oil production hit its lowest level since November 2014. Crude oil futures for April delivery gained 0.35% to $34.69 by 12:07AM GMT or 7:07AM ET, while Brent oil traded up 0.51% to $37.26.
The business front on Wall Street is relatively quiet with only a handful of earnings reports. So far on Friday, Staples Inc (NASDAQ:SPLS)missed consensus with its quarterly earnings per share (EPS), while Big Lots (NYSE:BIG) beat the street with its own EPS.