With the monthly Non-Farm Payroll report to be released this morning at 8:30 am EST, the focus in trading today will be almost exclusively on jobs. With announced job cuts this week alone of more than 300,000 for large corporations, the job situation is probably only going to get worse next month.
Today's data release is expected to be bad, so a terrible jobs report will not necessarily send the stock index futures lower. However, if the jobs report is even worse than the 350,000 drop that is expected, another volatile down day for stocks could be in the offing. Right now, the stock index futures are dead flat in anticipation of the release of this number, and I don't expect much trading until that time. Other futures are hanging on the result of the jobs report also, including even grains and crude oil.
