Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
NYSE
Stock futures climbed to kick off November as Amazon led big technology stocks into the green and traders looked past a disappointing jobs report.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures climbed 193 points, or 0.5%. S&P 500 futures ticked up 0.5%. Futures tied to the Nasdaq 100 added 0.6%.
Amazon rallied more than 5% as strength in the cloud and advertising businesses propelled the ecommerce giant above Wall Street’s earnings expectations. Intel soared more than 5% after exceeding analysts’ forecasts for revenue and offering strong guidance. The two stocks improved sentiment following some notable earnings disappointments this week.
Meanwhile, the jobs report released on Friday showed the U.S. economy added just 12,000 jobs in October, far below the Dow Jones estimate of 100,000. This marked the weakest level of jobs creation since December 2020. The unemployment rate, held at 4.1%, in line with estimates. However, traders were not reacting too much to the jobs figures, believing the dismal data was impacted by hurricanes and a Boeing strike.
“Friday’s jobs report showed that the labor market decelerated quite significantly in October compared to September,” said Clark Bellin, president and chief investment officer at Bellwether Wealth. “But this was a noisy number largely due to hurricanes and labor strikes, so it’s unlikely that this weakness is going to cause the Federal Reserve to pivot away from its expected 25 basis point rate cut at the November meeting.”
The moves higher come after a downbeat session on Thursday, which saw the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dragged down by post-earnings slumps in Microsoft and Meta Platforms. Both of the indexes notched their worst sessions since early September. The Dow, meanwhile, tumbled more than 300 points.
Thursday also marked the end of a losing trading month, a negative mark amid a strong year. The Dow led the major indexes down with a slide of 1.3%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq shed 1% and 0.5%, respectively.
