Market overview: Footsie pulls back to 200-day moving average

1630:Close Footsie edged closer to its 200-day moving average at the end of the week, riding higher on the coattails of basic resource stocks as they extender their recent rally. The DJ Stoxx 600 index for the sector finished the day with gains of over 6%, alongside hefty gains for copper and crude oil futures. Homebuilders took it on the chin as yields on 10-year Gilts backed up in the wake of the latest US jobs number. Euro/dollar and cable on the other hand continued to retrace recent losses ahead of next week’s ECB policy meeting. Investors are looking out to tomorrow’s China’s National People’s Congress. FTSE 100 up 68.97 points to 6,199.43.

1420: The drop in hourly earnings in today’s report is misleading, continuing a pattern of undershooting in months when the 15th – the payday for people paid semi-monthly - falls after the employment survey week. “Same thing in March, but then there'll be a huge rebound, putting wage growth y/y at new highs […] We don't expect payrolls to keep rising at anything like this pace, but the underlying momentum here is strong. […] That means you, Janet. The Fed should hike on the 16th, but in all probability, they won’t,” says Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

1413: Fed funds futures are assigning a 68% probability to a December 2016 Fed hike, versus 75% right after today's US jobs report was released, according to Bloomberg calculations. Oil futures are on track for a third week in a row of gains.

1330: US non-farm payrolls increased by 242,000 in February, comfortably outpacing the consensus forecast for an increase of 188,000. Job gains for the previous two months were revised higher by a combined 30,000. However, average hourly earnings declined by 0.1% over the month (consensus: 0.2%). The jobless rate was unchanged at 4.9%.

1330: Three-month copper futures are rising by 1.8% to $4,909.75 per metric tonne on the LME.

1044: Three month LME-traded copper futures are changing hands at $4,895 versus $4,821 per metric tonne yesterday.

0900: The Footsie is pacing early gains on Friday as investors wait on the latest monthly US jobs report, with miners shares front-and-centre at the head of the advance, led by Glencore. Overnight, the yuan strengthened by 0.27% to 6.5173 a dollar, taking its advance for the week to 0.37%, as the PBoC lifted the value of its daily fixing by 0.2%, the most in almost three weeks. The latter came amid speculation that Beijing had waded into the country's stockmarkets ahead of this weekend's National People's Congress. FTSE 100 up by 31.71 points to 6,162.54.