ASX set to fall, Wall Street rises as Tesla rallies; Microsoft cuts 9000 jobs
The S&P 500 was up 0.3 per cent in afternoon trading and on track to set a record for the third time in four days. The Dow Jones was down 50 points, or 0.1 per cent, in mid-afternoon trade, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8 per cent higher.
The Australian sharemarket is set to retreat with futures at 4.53am AEST pointing to a fall of 24 points, or 0.3 per cent, at the open. The ASX added 0.7 per cent on Wednesday to close at a fresh record. The Australian dollar was steady. It was fetching 65.83 US cents at 5.03am
Treasury yields were mixed in the bond market ahead of Thursday's report, which will show how many jobs US employers created and destroyed last month. The widespread expectation is that they hired more people than they fired but that the pace of hiring slowed from May.
A stunningly weak report released Wednesday morning, though, raised worries that Thursday's report may fall short. The data from ADP suggested that US employers outside the government cut 33,000 jobs from their payrolls last month, when economists were expecting to see growth of 115,000 jobs.
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'Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,' according to Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP.
The ADP report does not have a perfect track record predicting what the US government's more comprehensive jobs report will say each month. That preserves some hope that Thursday's data could be more encouraging. But a fear has been that uncertainty around Trump's tariffs could cause employers to freeze their hiring.
Many of Trump's stiff proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, and they're scheduled to kick into effect in about a week. Unless Trump reaches deals with other countries to lower the tariffs, they could hurt the economy and worsen inflation.
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