Before the Open (Jan 4)

Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Employment Numbers Day.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines did well. Japan and Taiwan were weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently posting relatively big gains. The UK, Denmark, Poland, France, Germany, Russia, Finland, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic are all doing very well. Kenya and Israel are down. Futures in the States point towards a healthy gap up open for the cash market.
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List of Indexes and ETFs – here
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The dollar is up. Oil and copper are up. Gold is down; silver is up. Bonds are down.
Here are the employment figures.
unemployment rate: 3.9% (up from 3.7%)
nonfarm payrolls: +312K
private payrolls:
average workweek: down 0.1 hours to 34.5 hours
hourly wages: up 11 cents (0.4%) to $27.48
labor participation rate:
November job gains revised up from 155K to 176K.
October gain raised from 237K to 274K.
Overnight Stock Movers from barchart.com…
(to be posted)
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Non-farm payrolls
9:45 PMI Services Index
10:15 Jerome Powell Speech
10:15 Fed’s Bostic Speech
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories
1:00 PM Baker-Hughes Rig Count
8:00 Fed’s Williams Speech on Saturday
10:15 Fed’s Bostic Speech on Saturday
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY