US pre-open: Futures lower ahead of NFP report

Wall Street futures were pointing to further losses ahead of the bell on Friday as traders patiently awaited the release of last month's all-important nonfarm payrolls report.

As of 1245 BST, Dow Jones futures were down 0.38%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.64% and 1.10% lower, respectively.

The Dow shed 219.22 points on Thursday as market participants thumbed over several jobs reports in an effort to gain further insight into the state of the US economy during August.

Friday's primary focus will be August's nonfarm payrolls report at 1330 BST, with Wall Street expecting to see payrolls grow by 161,000 and the unemployment rate modestly decline to 4.2%.

Scope Markets' Joshua Mahony said: "Today’s US jobs report appears to hold the keys to public perception over whether we are seeing the US economy falling into a recession, despite the fact that the likes of the Atlanta Fed currently predict Q3 GDP to come in at a healthy 2.1%. The rise in US unemployment last month triggered the now widely touted Sahm rule, which essentially draws a relationship between a short-term rise in unemployment with prior recessions.

"There are some hopes that last month’s rise to 4.3% unemployment could have been driven by short-term factors such as Hurricane Beryl. Thus, in a best-case scenario, we could see unemployment head lower allowing markets to breathe a sigh of relief."

In the corporate space, software firm DocuSign was in the green ahead of the bell following its quarterly top and bottom-line beat, while semiconductor giant Broadcom traded lower prior to the open after issuing Q4 guidance that fell short of analysts' expectations.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com