European stocks head for 7th weekly gain

Yen at two-month high on rate hike bets

Gold constant near record peak

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters) -

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

In a week that began with U.S. President Donald Trump starting a trade war and whipping up market volatility, financiers have watched out for making any significant moves, offered that he followed through on his hazard to impose duties on China while giving 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 given the prospective distortions from spells of cold weather and the California wildfires, the range of projections is large.

“The focus for the monetary markets in current weeks has actually been extremely much on Trump and his economic policies, in specific on trade, however today there is the capacity for the tasks information to affect Fed rate expectations,” Derek Halpenny, a currency strategist at MUFG, forum.altaycoins.com said.

“A quite large divergence from the agreement is still likely required to shift expectations especially but extreme weather condition at this time of the year has in the past led to greatly weaker NFP readings and weather could impact today ´ s report,” he said.

Futures on the Nasdaq and passfun.awardspace.us S&P 500 were trading mainly steady on the day, while shares of

Amazon

slipped in premarket trading on the back of

weakness

in the retailer’s cloud system.

In Europe, the STOXX 600 headed for a seventh straight week of gains, trading flat on the day after having struck record highs previously this week, following a wave of strong incomes from the weight-loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk, German software application business SAP and French lending institution BNP Paribas.

European stocks have staged their finest performance in a years against Wall Street in the very first 6 weeks of 2025, fakenews.win however the focus is now on whether those gains can be sustained.

On the Asian market, tech stocks staged a rally, powered by Chinese retail financiers, who have caught the AI style in the wake of home-grown start-up DeepSeek’s development.

DELICATE CHINA

Beijing’s relatively measured response to Trump’s tariffs has left space for negotiations, analysts say, [users.atw.hu](http://users.atw.hu/samp-info-forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=a17872fe6d1af84e1729640ae9ade480&action=profile