European stocks head for 7th weekly gain

Yen at two-month high up on rate trek bets

Gold steady near record peak

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters) -

U.S. stock futures steadied on Friday ahead of U.S. payrolls information, with financiers carefully positive that the world might prevent a full-on trade war, while the possibility of more rate hikes in Japan this year briefly sent the yen towards two-month highs.

In a week that began with U.S. President Donald Trump kicking off a trade war and whipping up market volatility, investors have watched out for making any significant relocations, provided that he followed through on his risk to enforce responsibilities on China while granting Mexico and Canada a one-month reprieve.

The all-important U.S. jobs report for January is due ahead of the Wall Street open. Economists anticipate to see 170,000 workers contributed to nonfarm payrolls last month, but offered the prospective distortions from spells of winter and the California wildfires, the series of forecasts is wide.

“The focus for the financial markets in recent weeks has been really much on Trump and his financial policies, in specific on trade, however today there is the potential for the jobs data to affect Fed rate expectations,” Derek Halpenny, a currency strategist at MUFG, said.

“A quite big divergence from the agreement is still likely required to shift expectations significantly but extreme weather at this time of the year has in the past resulted in sharply weaker NFP readings and weather condition might affect today ´ s report,” he said.

Futures on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were trading mainly constant on the day, engel-und-waisen.de while shares of

Amazon

insinuated premarket trading on the back of

weak point

in the retailer’s cloud unit.

In Europe, the STOXX 600 headed for a seventh straight week of gains, trading flat on the day after having hit record highs previously today, following a wave of strong revenues from the similarity Danish weight-loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk, German software business SAP and French lender BNP Paribas.

European stocks have actually staged their best performance in a years against Wall Street in the very first six weeks of 2025, but the focus is now on whether those gains can be sustained.

On the Asian market, tech stocks staged a rally, grandtribunal.org powered by Chinese retail financiers, who have actually attacked on the AI style in the wake of home-grown start-up DeepSeek’s breakthrough.

DELICATE CHINA

Beijing’s apparently measured action to Trump’s tariffs has left room for settlements, experts say, oke.zone which has assisted repair investor belief.

stock index closed up 1.3% after touching a one-month high.

“Whilst there is considerable sound and uncertainty, we do not see intensifying trade tensions as a video game changer in the potential customers for the Chinese market,” said James Cook, financial investment director for emerging markets at Federated Hermes.

Markets are pricing in 43 basis points of alleviating this year from the Fed, with a rate cut in July completely priced in, as policymakers remain in no rush to begin the rate-cutting cycle again.

The dollar edged up 0.1% against a basket of currencies, having actually rallied 7% in 2015, as financiers priced in a much more aggressive policy position from the Fed this year, where rate cuts may be scarce.

Other main banks are cutting interest rates, while the Bank of Japan is tailoring up for at least another rate hike this year. Strong wage development information has actually boosted the chances of tighter monetary policy, which has pressed the yen to two-month highs against the dollar.

The yen touched 150.96 per dollar overnight, its greatest level since December 10, before reducing to leave the dollar up 0.4% on the day at 152.155.

Sterling reversed earlier losses to rise 0.1% to $1.2449, having dropped 0.5% on Thursday as the BoE cut rate of interest and slashed its 2025 UK development forecast.

In products, oil edged up, while gold steadied above $2,800 an ounce, close to record highs.

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore