Peter Nurse    

Investing.com — U.S. stock prices opened higher on Friday ahead of the anticipated release of the monthly official job report.

At 7:01 AM ET (1100 GMT), it was up 200 point or 0.6%. The contract traded 25 more points (or 0.6%) higher, and rose 100 points (0.7%).

Thursday’s close was sharply down for the main Wall Street indexes, with blue-chip, broad-based, and tech-heavy closing lower than 1.5%. 

The three major averages posted their worst quarter since March 2020, with the Dow and S&P 500 declining 4.6% and 4.9% and the Nasdaq dropping more than 9%, as a hawkish Federal Reserve and soaring consumer prices raised fears of a sharp economic slowdown.

Friday’s main focus will be the March for March at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT). This report is expected to reveal further evidence of an improving labor market. The Federal Reserve has more latitude to tighten its belt.

Analysts predict an increase in 490,000. The unemployment rate will fall to 3.7%. This suggests that the central bank is able to continue to fight inflation and not be too concerned about the economic consequences. 

Additional economic indicators are due Friday, including the March Report and February Report. Both reports will be available at 10 AM ET.

After both Ford and General Motors decided to stop production in their Michigan plants, they will dominate the corporate sector.

Ford is going to suspend production at Flat Rock Assembly Plant where it produces the Mustang. GM will instead stop production at Lansing Grand River Assembly which makes the Cadillac CT4, Cadillac CT5 and Chevrolet Camaro.

Meme’s favorite stock GameStop (NYSE 🙂 will be also in the spotlight after GameStop, a troubled retailer of video games announced plans to split its stock late Thursday.  

Oil prices stabilized after the previous session’s sharp losses on the news that the U.S. plans to release one million barrels a day for six months from its , starting in May. It would mark the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s largest ever release. 

International Energy Agency members will meet Friday night to discuss their plans to join the organization, which follows the delivery of 60 million barrels at the beginning March.

At 7 am ET futures had traded 0.3% lower to $99.92/barrel, and the contract dropped 0.1% at $104.65. Each benchmark was headed for a weekly decline of over 12 percent, the biggest in two years.

Also, the price of gold fell 0.8% at $1,933.10/oz while it traded 0.1% higher at 1.1061.