U.S. stock futures creep higher after jobs report

6/6/2014

NEW YORK — Stock futures rose today after the government said U.S. employers hired at a good clip for the fourth month in a row.

KEEPING SCORE: About 50 minutes before the start of regular trading, Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 48 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,866.

Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures gained four points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,943 while Nasdaq 100 futures climbed nine points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,786.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 index, the benchmark for most investment funds, reached another all-time high.

EMPLOYMENT PICTURE: The Labor Department said employers added 217,000 jobs to their payrolls in May. That’s down from 282,000 in April but in the range of what economists had expected.

The unemployment rate remained at 6.3 percent. Wall Street’s forecasters had expected it to inch up a notch.

RENTAL REDO: Hertz slumped after the car-rental company said in a regulatory filing that it needed to redo its financial results for the past three years because of accounting errors. Hertz Global Holdings dropped $2.81, or 9 percent, to $27.61 in premarket trading.

EUROPE: Europe’s major markets climbed higher today. Germany’s main stock index, the DAX, rose 0.5 percent, while France’s CAC 40 gained 0.8 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.4 percent.

ASIA: By contrast, most Asian markets ended lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed down 0.7 percent. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.5 percent. Japan’s Nikkei 225 ended little changed.

BONDS AND COMMODS: In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slid to 2.55 percent from 2.59 percent late Thursday. Yields fall when bond prices rise. The price of oil edged up 20 cents to $102.68 a barrel.