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European stocks head for 7th weekly gain

Yen at two-month high up on rate trek bets

Gold steady near record peak

By Amanda Cooper

LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters) -

U.S. stock futures steadied on Friday ahead of U.S. payrolls data, with investors very carefully optimistic that the world may avoid a full-on trade war, while the prospect of more in Japan this year briefly sent the yen towards two-month highs.

In a week that started with U.S. President Donald Trump kicking off a trade war and whipping up market volatility, financiers have actually watched out for making any significant relocations, provided that he followed through on his risk to enforce responsibilities on China while granting Mexico and Canada a one-month reprieve.

The all-important U.S. jobs report for January is due ahead of the Wall Street open. Economists anticipate to see 170,000 employees included to nonfarm payrolls last month, however offered the possible distortions from spells of winter and the California wildfires, the range of forecasts is broad.

"The focus for the monetary markets in current weeks has actually been quite on Trump and his financial policies, in specific on trade, however today there is the capacity for the tasks information to affect Fed rate expectations," Derek Halpenny, a currency strategist at MUFG, said.

"A pretty large divergence from the agreement is still most likely needed to move expectations significantly however extreme weather at this time of the year has in the past led to dramatically weaker NFP readings and weather condition could affect today ´ s report," he said.

Futures on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were trading mainly steady on the day, while shares of

Amazon

insinuated premarket trading on the back of

weak point

in the retailer's cloud unit.

In Europe, the STOXX 600 headed for a seventh straight week of gains, trading flat on the day after having struck record highs previously today, following a spate of strong profits from the similarity Danish weight-loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk, German software application company SAP and French lender BNP Paribas.

European stocks have actually staged their best performance in a decade against Wall Street in the first 6 weeks of 2025, but the focus is now on whether those gains can be sustained.

On the Asian market, tech stocks staged a rally, powered by Chinese retail investors, coastalplainplants.org who have actually caught the AI theme in the wake of home-grown start-up DeepSeek's breakthrough.

DELICATE CHINA

Beijing's apparently determined action to Trump's tariffs has actually left room for disgaeawiki.info settlements, experts say, which has actually assisted repair financier belief.

China's blue-chip stock index closed up 1.3% after touching a one-month high.

"Whilst there is substantial noise and uncertainty, we don't see intensifying trade stress as a game changer in the potential customers for the Chinese market," said James Cook, investment director for emerging markets at Federated Hermes.

Markets are pricing in 43 basis points of relieving this year from the Fed, with a rate cut in July fully priced in, as policymakers remain in no hurry to start the rate-cutting cycle again.

The dollar edged up 0.1% against a basket of currencies, kenpoguy.com having actually rallied 7% last year, as financiers priced in a far more aggressive policy stance from the Fed this year, where rate cuts may be few and far between.

Other main banks are cutting rate of interest, wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de while the Bank of Japan is tailoring up for a minimum of another rate hike this year. Strong wage growth data has actually intensified the opportunities of tighter monetary policy, which has actually pushed the yen to two-month highs against the dollar.

The yen touched 150.96 per dollar overnight, its strongest level because December 10, before alleviating to leave the dollar up 0.4% on the day at 152.155.

Sterling reversed earlier losses to increase 0.1% to $1.2449, users.atw.hu having dropped 0.5% on Thursday as the BoE cut rates of interest and slashed its 2025 UK growth projection.

In commodities, oil edged up, while gold steadied above $2,800 an ounce, near to record highs.

(Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; additional reporting by Stephen Culp, Marc Jones and library.kemu.ac.ke Alun John; editing by Shri Navaratnam, setiathome.berkeley.edu Sam Holmes, Gareth Jones and Angus MacSwan)