U.S. stock index futures were muted Friday as investors waited for the monthly jobs report to gain insight into the central bank's interest-rate path, while Amazon.com's shares were pressured by cloud computing weakness and a tepid forecast.
U.S. job growth likely slowed last month, partly restrained by the California wildfires and cold weather in parts of the country, with a Reuters poll of analysts showing the addition of 170,000 jobs after surging 256,000 in December.
"Today's data is not expected to show the kind of slowdown that would force the Fed's hand," Max McKechnie, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in an e-mailed statement.
"While payrolls are forecast to moderate after January's bumper print, the anticipated 170 thousand jobs are still more than enough to keep the Fed on hold for now," he said.
Traders do not expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to make a move on interest rates in its next meeting in March, but a cut is widely anticipated in June, according to the CME's FedWatch Tool.
Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Lorie Logan signaled overnight that she was ready to keep interest rates on hold for "quite some time" even if inflation drops closer to the Fed's 2% goal, as long as the labor market does not falter.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com dipped 3.2% in premarket trading due to weakness in the retailer's cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, and lower-than-expected forecasts for first-quarter revenue and profit.
At 06:47 a.m. ET, Dow E-minis were up 37 points, or 0.08%, S&P 500 E-minis were mostly unchanged, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 7.25 points, or 0.03%.
Markets saw a dismal start to the week when U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping trade tariffs over the weekend, but suspended the levies on goods from Mexico and Canada on Monday for a month.
Since then, a host of strong earnings and optimism about a potential China-U.S. trade deal despite Beijing's tit-for-tat tariffs have set all three major indexes on track for weekly advances, with the Dow on pace for its fourth straight weekly rise.
Of the 292 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, more than 76% beat analysts' expectations, according to data compiled by LSEG.
A preliminary reading of U.S. consumer sentiment for February is due shortly after markets open.
Among other early movers, Pinterest jumped 22% after the image-sharing platform forecast first-quarter revenue above market estimates.
Elf Beauty tumbled 26.9% after the cosmetics company cut its annual net sales and profit forecasts, while Expedia added 10.4% after the online travel platform posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.
Chipmaker Microchip Technology fell 6.4% after forecasting fourth-quarter net sales and profit below estimates, while Fortinet advanced 8.6% after the cybersecurity company forecast its full-year revenue above estimates.