US stock futures steady ahead of payroll data

by Andre Janse van Vuuren

US equity futures held firm as traders await June’s payrolls report on Thursday and navigate how trade talks develop ahead of the Trump administration’s July 9 deadline.

Contracts for the S&P 500 ticked higher 0.1% after the US benchmark paused its record-breaking rally during the previous session. Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed. European equities advanced 0.4%, while Asian stocks edged lower.

As the US continues talks with key trading partners, Trump has turned up pressure on Japan and reaffirmed he won’t delay his tariff deadline, now just a week away. While markets swung wildly on trade headlines in April, equity indexes are now signaling diminished concern with stocks near record highs.

Data so far this week has affirmed the resilience of the US economy in the face of Trump’s tariff agenda. Tomorrow, the monthly payrolls report will offer investors fresh insight into the labor market and the path of interest rates.

“This is quite clearly, in my mind – an opportunity to buy the dip, with the bull case of strong earnings growth, a solid underlying economy and calmer rhetoric on trade, remaining firmly intact,” noted Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone Group in London.

US Treasuries retreated across the curve as investors pared bets on the size of interest rate cuts for the rest of the year, with the 10-year yield rising four basis points to 4.28%. 

Swaps now imply about 63 basis points of Fed policy easing by year-end, down from 67 basis points on Tuesday before data unexpectedly showed that US job openings rose to the highest since November.

Corporate Highlights:

• Banco Santander SA agreed to buy Banco Sabadell SA’s UK unit for £2.65 billion ($3.64 billion), a deal that will make it the UK’s third-largest lender by some measures.
• Stellantis NV’s US deliveries fell 10% in the second quarter even as sales of its key Jeep and Ram brands improved, showing the beleaguered automaker is making some progress in its slog to recapture lost share.
• KKR & Co. has agreed to buy Spectris Plc in a deal that values the UK maker of precision and testing equipment and software at about £4.1 billion ($5.6 billion), surpassing an earlier bid by a consortium led by Advent.
• SoftBank Group Corp.’s $6.5 billion acquisition of semiconductor designer Ampere Computing LLC is facing a potentially lengthy probe by the US government.

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.4% as of 10 a.m. London time
• S&P 500 futures rose 0.1%
• Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed
• Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%
• The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.1%
• The MSCI Emerging Markets Index was little changed

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed
• The euro fell 0.3% to $1.1776
• The Japanese yen fell 0.4% to 143.96 per dollar
• The offshore yuan was little changed at 7.1663 per dollar
• The British pound fell 0.3% to $1.3699

Cryptocurrencies

• Bitcoin rose 1.7% to $107,796.7
• Ether rose 1.4% to $2,450.68

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced four basis points to 4.28%
• Germany’s 10-year yield advanced six basis points to 2.64%
• Britain’s 10-year yield advanced four basis points to 4.50%

Commodities

• Brent crude rose 0.2% to $67.26 a barrel
• Spot gold fell 0.2% to $3,333.49 an ounce

This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

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