US pre-open: Futures mixed ahead of payrolls data

Wall Street futures were pointing to a mixed session ahead of the bell on Friday following the previous session's tech bloodbath and ahead of the newest edition of the Labor Department's closely watched non-farm payrolls report.

As of 1230 BST, Dow Jones futures were up 0.22%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.04% and 1.04% weaker, respectively, as tech stocks continued to underperform.

The Dow closed a whopping 807.77 points lower on Thursday as tech stocks snapped a ten-day winning streak.

As far as Friday was concerned, the day's main focus will be August's non-farm payrolls report and unemployment figures at 1330 BST. Economists expect the data to reveal that the US economy added more than 1.0m new jobs last month.

Oanda's Craig Erlam said: "The jobs report today may highly influence whether stock markets spend another day in the red, with investors seemingly adopting a wait-and-see approach ahead of the open.

"This is the penultimate jobs report before November's Presidential election, not a lot of time for Trump to prove he's overseeing an economy rapidly on the mend. A couple of strong reports could give the President some momentum heading into 3 November."

Shares in stocks tied to the reopening of the economy, including the likes of Boeing, airlines and cruise operators, were higher in pre-market trading, as were bank stocks like Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.