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 data, with investors very carefully positive that the world may avoid a full-on trade war, while the prospect of more rate walkings in Japan this year briefly sent out the yen towards two-month highs.

In a week that started with U.S. President Donald Trump kicking off a trade war and whipping up market volatility, investors have been wary of making any significant relocations, given that he followed through on his risk to enforce tasks on China while approving Mexico and Canada a one-month reprieve.

The necessary U.S. jobs report for January is due ahead of the Wall Street open. Economists anticipate to see 170,000 workers included to nonfarm payrolls last month, but offered the prospective distortions from spells of cold weather condition and the California wildfires, the variety of forecasts is broad.

“The focus for the monetary markets in current weeks has been very much on Trump and his economic policies, in specific on trade, but today there is the potential for the tasks information to influence Fed rate expectations,” Derek Halpenny, wiki.rolandradio.net a currency strategist at MUFG, said.

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

Futures on the Nasdaq and 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 unit.

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

European stocks have staged their best performance in a decade against in the first six weeks of 2025, 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, iuridictum.pecina.cz who have attacked on 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 actually left space for negotiations, analysts say, which has actually assisted repair investor sentiment.

China’s blue-chip stock index closed up 1.3% after touching a one-month high.

“Whilst there is significant sound and uncertainty, we don’t see intensifying trade stress as a video game changer in the prospects for the Chinese market,” said James Cook, financial investment director for emerging markets at Federated Hermes.

Markets are pricing in 43 basis points of reducing this year from the Fed, with a rate cut in July fully priced in, as policymakers remain in no hurry to start 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 stance from the Fed this year, where rate cuts may be couple of and far in between.

Other main banks are cutting rate of interest, while the Bank of Japan is tailoring up for at least another rate trek this year. Strong wage development data has intensified the opportunities of tighter monetary policy, which has actually pushed the yen to two-month highs against the dollar.

The yen touched 150.96 per dollar overnight, wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de its greatest level given that December 10, before relieving 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 growth forecast.

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

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore