Two ways to view the US jobs report and neither looks positive for the Nasdaq 100

At 12.30pm GMT we will get the March US monthly jobs report. That is expected to show non farm payrolls rising by around 140k, compared to a 151k gain in February. The level of unemployment is forecast to remain at 4.1% and wages are also forecast to remain unchanged at 4% annualised. Now here is the thing; even if we get a beat on all of this data, will it matter? The thoughts here are that it will not. The simple reason for this is that this data is retrospective and historic and as such does not matter given the latest developments facing the US economic outlook as a result of developments this week. Granted better data might not see the markets fall as much, but for sure anything worse likely will. That is because the markets will only be thinking; what is bad now will only get worse, unless this whole trade debacle initiated by the US President and his team is reversed. So, as you surely know, the Nasdaq 100 was the worst performing US stock market index yesterday and as noted long before it opened, the outlook for the likes of Apple and Amazon was particularly bleak. So, no surprise to those stocks hit hard yesterday, but they were not the worst. That lay with a whole host of leading tech names posting double digit losses yesterday. The Nasdaq 100 closed pretty much on its lows of the day (18,502), at 18,521, with a loss of 1,060 points on the day. So, the Nasdaq 100 futures are priced to open even lower right now and that is currently at around 18,400, but earlier it was close to 18,300