Friday, September 4, 2026 Opening bell

Jobs beat triples forecasts, Fed hike back in play

Overnight

US stocks had their best day in a month on Thursday, with the S&P 500 up 1.1% to 7,747, the Nasdaq up 1.4% to 26,584 and the Dow up 1.2% to 53,685, after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he was open to leaving interest rates alone in September. Asian markets rose overnight and the Japanese yen jumped 2.7% against the dollar on bets that the Bank of Japan will raise its own rates, while Europe opened slightly softer, with the STOXX 600 index of large European companies down 0.2% at 648.08 and Volkswagen up 5.7% on a restructuring deal. Then at 8:30am Eastern the August jobs report arrived at 162,000 new jobs against the roughly 53,000 economists had penciled in, unemployment steady at 4.1%, and June and July were revised up by a combined 55,000, leaving stock futures mixed heading into the open.

What to watch

The whole session now hangs on how traders read a labour market that is running hotter than anyone forecast. Strong hiring is good news for workers, but it gives the Federal Reserve room to raise interest rates to cool inflation rather than cut them, and markets had already priced the September meeting as close to a coin flip before this morning. Watch bond yields as the clearest tell, because a jump in the 10 year Treasury yield from Thursday's 4.77% would say the market has moved toward expecting a hike, and note that US markets are shut Monday for Labor Day, so positions get squared up today.