Stock Futures Point Slightly Higher Ahead of Jobs Report, Potential Supreme Court Tariff Ruling

Stock futures edged higher Friday ahead of the December U.S. jobs report and a possible Supreme Court ruling on President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with major equities indexes poised to register solid weekly gains.

Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 futures pointed up 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively, while those affiliated with the Dow Jones Industrial Average were near flat.

Yesterday, major stock indexes finished mixed, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average rising but the tech-heavy Nasdaq pulled lower by data-storage shares, while the benchmark S&P 500 ended essentially flat. Still, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 entered Friday up a respective 1.8%, 1.1%, and 0.9% for the week.

Investors will be focused Friday on the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is expected to show the U.S. economy added 73,000 jobs in December, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.5% from 4.6% the month before. The job growth would be slightly higher than the 64,000 jobs added in November, when the unemployment rate hit its highest level since 2021.

Ahead of the report, the 10-year Treasury yield, which influences interest rates on a variety of commercial and consumer loans, edged higher to 4.19% from Thursday’s close below 4.18%.

Traders also will be paying attention in case the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the legality of Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs. It could back the “Liberation Day” levies announced in April or go as far as to deem them illegal and roll them back. A ruling could bring clarity to trade policy that has been muddled for nearly a year—and which, when first announced, shocked markets that have since recovered.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, were up 0.9% to $58.25 a barrel in recent trading, while gold futures advanced 0.5% to $4,480 an ounce.

Bitcoin was trading around $90,200, down from an overnight high of about $91,500. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies, was 0.1% higher at 99.04.

In corporate moves, General Motors (GM) stock was down 2% in premarket trading after the automaker said it would incur a $6 billion charge tied to its EV business, while U.S.-listed shares of mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO) declined 3.5% on news it was restarting talks to merge with Glencore, whose shares soared 10% in London trading.

Data-storage firms Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate Technology Holdings (STX), who were among the worst performers in the S&P 500 Thursday, were rebounding about 1% each before the bell.

Shares of Magnificent Seven tech giants Nvidia (NVDA), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), and Apple (AAPL) were up less than 1% in premarket trading. Alphabet surpassed Apple to rank second behind Nvidia in market capitalization Wednesday, at just below $4 trillion.