Nonfarm Payroll Numbers May Upset a Steady Market

The US stock market kept mostly steady numbers for Wednesday as trading ended, with the major market indices closing just slightly up from the day before.

On Thursday morning, the markets saw a slight shift upward, but overall, we saw very little movement. We noticed some recovery from MicroStrategy (MSTR) and a few other stocks as the market corrected for major dips earlier in the weeks.

The Dow Jones climbed 0.25% as markets began opening Thursday, with the S&P 500 gaining just 0.14%. The Nasdaq Composite led the way toward positive but muted change with a 0.34% increase.

Friday Inflation News to Impact Market

We expect the release of the US Nonfarm Payrolls reports on Friday to have an impact on the stock markets. Many investors are waiting for any kind of inflation data that might help them to make an investment decision. Lately, inflation has been high, staying elevated and growing for most of 2024.

The Federal reserve is hesitant to make a move on interest rate cuts, and is holding fast with no rate cuts for now. We expect to see some by September, though. The hope is that by that point, inflation will have diminished somewhat.

Nonfarm Payrolls may shed some light on whether inflation is moving in one direction or another. That information is coming out Friday, so we expect to see the stock market wait for that to make any sudden moves. The last prediction for Nonfarm Payrolls was way off, with 212,000 forecast and 303,000 actually reported. There could be a similar upset this month, as the April numbers come in on Friday, just after the start of May.

If the numbers are up more than expected, that would mean good things for inflation news and could help make investors less timid to buy up stocks.