Before the bell: Nasdaq futures rebound 1.3% after the AI rout, but Dow futures slip ahead of jobs data

Stock futures are bouncing at the edges and sliding in the middle. Nasdaq 100 futures are up about 1.3% from Thursday's settlement, S&P 500 futures are up about 0.2%, and Dow futures are down about 1%. The market gets its first read on the labor market since Thursday's rout at 8:30 AM ET, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases October payrolls.

Futures around 6:20 AM ET

Quotes from Yahoo Finance, read about 6:20 to 6:30 AM ET. Percent changes are our arithmetic against each contract's Thursday daily settlement (VIX against its close), so they can differ from feeds that measure another way.

Where the cash market left off

Thursday's session ended with the S&P 500 at 7,353.73, down 4.36% from Wednesday's 7,688.62, per Yahoo Finance data. The Dow closed at 51,523.06, down 1,833 points, and the Nasdaq Composite at 24,315.00. Our close story has the day. On the six-month chart, the S&P 500 is 5.9% below its Oct. 6 closing peak of 7,818.93.

The bounce in Nasdaq futures is large against Thursday's drop of about 5.5% in the Composite, but it is a futures move against a settlement price, not a recovery of the cash index. The cash market opens at 9:30 AM ET.

Overnight: Asia and Europe both fell

Japan's Nikkei 225 closed at 57,434.77, down about 6.0% from 61,077.90, and South Korea's Kospi closed at 5,059.69, down about 6.0% from 5,383.80, per Yahoo Finance data. We covered the bear market in the Nikkei and the Kospi trading halt earlier. In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 is down about 1.6% and London's FTSE 100 is down about 2.2% in early trading, by our arithmetic against Thursday's closes.

Rates, oil and bitcoin

The 10-year Treasury yield ended Thursday at 4.84%, down from 4.90% Wednesday and 4.95% Tuesday, according to the U.S. Treasury's daily par yield curve. The 2-year fell more, to 4.46% from 4.58%, so money moved toward short-dated safety as stocks sold off. Bitcoin is trading near $75,980, roughly flat on the morning after a seven-week low; see our earlier report.

The 8:30 AM jobs report

CNBC reports the Dow Jones consensus is for 59,000 jobs added in October, up from 29,000 in September, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.2%. CNBC also notes that payroll growth from January 2025 through September 2026 has averaged just 35,000 a month, with seven months of losses in that span, while initial jobless claims fell to 189,000 last week. Our ADP preview has the private-payroll read.

Why a weak number may not mean what it used to: economists quoted by CNBC say a shrinking labor force means the economy needs fewer new jobs to keep unemployment steady. That makes the unemployment rate and wage growth as important as the headline count, and it is why a "good" print is hard to define this morning.

Fed officials have been discussing small rate increases, as we reported when Hammack and Barkin made the case for gradual hikes. For a borrower, the arithmetic is simple: each quarter-point rise on a $500,000 floating-rate credit line adds about $1,250 a year in interest, roughly $104 a month. A hot wage number is therefore a cost story for owners, not only a market story.

Company news and earnings

Per the Nasdaq earnings calendar, Enbridge, Moderna, Brookfield Asset Management, Humana, Vistra and PPL are listed to report before the open, with Honda also scheduled. The calendar's consensus per-share figures are a loss of $1.10 for Moderna, a loss of $1.03 for Humana, $0.36 for Enbridge and $2.89 for Vistra. Timing and estimates can change, so check each company's release.

Memory and chip stocks, which led Thursday's selloff, are the group to watch at the open, as we noted in The Nightcap.

Sources: Yahoo Finance; U.S. Treasury; CNBC (Nov. 5 jobs preview); Nasdaq earnings calendar; BLS release schedule. Quotes may be delayed. This is market information, not investment advice.