Dow Jones futures further in the red ahead of payrolls

The Dow Jones futures are close to session lows just now, with less than one hour to go before the US February jobs report is released. Yesterday the Dow was the weakest of the three main indexes as once again it missed out on having NVIDIA as a component. That said, the index still closed higher on the day, by 130 points, to end the session at 38,791. The futures price is right now pricing a reopening below 38,650. Of course ahead of the opening we have the latest US monthly jobs report, at 1.30pm GMT. Here is what is expected. Payrolls are forecast to rise at a more moderate pace of 200k (353k last time). The underlying rate is expected to remains static, at 3.7% and average annual wages are expected to rise at a rate of 4.3%, compared to 4.5% in January. So, if the Dow Jones futures are going to rise on this data it is not necessarily a straight forward equation. A weak report that sends US yields lower might be supportive in some ways, but of course a really weak report is worse, as it may heighten the risks of recession and that is not ultimately good for stocks. Conversely a strong report is positive for the Dow all around one might think. That is because the index has risen irrespective of US yields, even when they were higher than they are right now. We shall just have to see how this plays out.