Dow Futures Fall 20 Points: June News

US stocks opened marginally lower on Friday as investors remained cautious ahead of the release of a key monthly employment report that could guide future Federal Reserve policy.

At 07:00 a.m. ET (1100 GMT), Dow futures were down 20 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 futures were down 10 points, or 0.3%, and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 65 points, or 0.5%. Major Wall Street indexes closed with significant gains on Thursday on hopes that declines in the prices of major commodities such as crude oil and copper signaled that inflationary trends had already peaked. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up nearly 350 points, or 1.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 2.3% and the broad-based S&P 500 gained 1.5%, marking its fourth consecutive positive day and the longest winning streak of the year so far. However, despite the recent gains, recession fears remain strong as the Federal Reserve signaled in the minutes of its June policy meeting earlier this week that it is prepared to raise interest rates by another 50-75 basis points at its meeting later this month in a bid to contain inflation. Ahead of that, the June employment report, due at 08:30 ET (1230 GMT), is expected to show that the economy added 268,000 positions during the month, slowing from the 390,000 jobs created in May. The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 3.6%, while average hourly earnings, a gauge of inflationary pressures, are expected to rise 0.3% mom, unchanged from May. In the corporate sector, Levi Strauss (NYSE:LEVI) shares rose pre-market after the jeans retailer posted strong second-quarter results, raising its quarterly dividend as people stuck to the casual styles that prevailed during lockdown. GameStop (NYSE:GME) shares fell pre-market after the troubled video game retailer fired CFO Michael Recupero and laid off some employees as part of its turnaround plan. Also, Spirit Airlines (NYSE:SAVE) postponed a shareholder vote scheduled for Friday on its $2.4 billion sale to Frontier Group (NASDAQ:ULCC) so that its board of directors can resume talks with both Frontier and JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU).