Beat the street: Awaiting NFP; Micron Technology shares record high; Levi Strauss
US stocks indicated higher as investors await NFP and more economic signals, which could clarify the timing of the Fed's first rate cut.
Watching Micron Technology after its shares hit a record high in the previous session. Jeans giant Levi Strauss raises its profit forecast.
(Partial Video Transcript)
Today's overview
Angeline Ong: Hello, I'm Angeline Ong and welcome to “Beat the street”, the show that gives you the tradeable news and data you need to know ahead of the Wall Street open. Coming up, the US stocks indicated higher as investors awaited that jobs number on Friday. And more economic signals which could clarify the timing of the Fed's first rate cut. And it's all about chips. Micron Technology shares indicated higher after hitting a record high in the previous session. We'll have a look at the impact of the Taiwan quake as well. And Levi Strauss, the jeans giant raises its profit forecast. We'll tell you why in just a moment.
Breaking news on trade balance numbers
But first, we've got some breaking news just coming through as we speak. Just checking my terminal here, because I can tell you that in terms of trade balance numbers, this is international trade for February. We were looking out for -67.3 [billion]. We got a reading of -68.9 billion. Also, the initial jobless claims, which is actually the more interesting figure ahead of that jobs number on Friday. That weekly number we were looking at for 214,000, we got a slightly stronger than expected reading, 221,000. Just looking at the 15 minute chart here pre that data. We're at around 39,251. We have since seen a slight spike above, but really not very much of a change there.
Looking at the US 500 as well. And there you have it, a similar picture there. If I broaden this out to the wider view and take you on to the daily chart, you can see that we are seeing some signs of topping out on the Dow Jones Industrials here. We are still seeing the maintenance of this upward trend channel, but it is starting to peter out now as the higher highs are not as impressive as the ones after October.
(Watch the video for the full "Beat the street" episode)
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