Market Watch: Jobs Report Sparks Interest as Futures Experience a Minor Dip

Just before the weekend, the stock market had a little drop as everyone waited for important news about jobs in the US. This news could be a game-changer and influence the decision about interest rates made by the Federal Reserve.

On Friday, before the stock market opened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) futures went down a tiny bit, about 0.1%. The contracts for the Nasdaq 100 (^NDX) fell around 0.3%. Tech companies, like Alphabet (GOOGL) and AMD (AMD), did well on Thursday, thanks to some cool stuff they introduced to compete with ChatGPT and Nvidia (NVDA) chips.

This week, a lot of attention has been on news about jobs, all leading up to the important US nonfarm-payrolls report for November, coming out early on Friday. This report is like a big test for the stock market. People have been feeling good about the stock market because they think the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates too much, and the US economy will have a smooth ride.

Earlier in the week, signs that the job market was slowing down made people happy because it means the Federal Reserve's plan to control inflation might be working. But this Friday's report might be a bit tricky to understand because worker strikes messed up the numbers in October.

In another part of the story related to OpenAI, a group in the UK that makes sure things are fair in business said they're going to check out the partnership between ChatGPT and Microsoft (MSFT) to see if there might be some problems.

Looking at other things, like oil, prices went up a bit after going down for a while. People are watching to see if OPEC+ (a group of oil-producing countries) will cut down on how much oil they produce to balance things out. Both West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) and Brent (BZ=F) crude futures went up by about 2%, which is a small sign of hope in the energy world.

Also Read: Market Watch: Investors Brace for Impact as Key Economic Data Takes Center Stage