Research In Motion rallies on estimate of quarterly performance U.S. stock futures edged upward Friday as traders braced for the release of data that could show the worst month of job losses in 60 years, and Research In Motion rallied as the phone maker reported strong sales of the popular BlackBerry mobile device. Wavering through the early parts of the morning, S&P 500 futures rose 1.5 points to 837.00 and Nasdaq 100 futures added 5.5 points to 1,307.00. Dow industrial futures, however, slipped 12 points. Walt Disney , a Dow industrials component, fell 1% after being downgraded to neutral by J.P. Morgan. News of increased funding for the International Monetary Fund, relaxed accounting standards for heretofore toxic securities and hopes for an economic recovery drove markets higher across the globe on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average surging 216 points, the S&P 500 rising 23 points and the Nasdaq Composite rallying 51 points. "Risk appetite appears to have returned significantly, which is reflected in the rise in equities this week," noted analysts from Fidelity International, the offshore arm of Fidelity Investments. "Although views on the medium-term outlook have improved markedly after the G20 summit, caution rules ahead of the latest U.S. payroll figures due later today, especially against the backdrop of ADP Employment Index released on Wednesday, which reported that the U.S. labor market had worsened in March." Economists polled by MarketWatch expect payrolls have slumped 688,000 in March, after a 651,000 drop in February. Ahead of that data, the dollar briefly hit 100 yen, the first time it was trading that high in five months. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds edged up 1 basis point to 2.78%. "Bonds remain remarkably sanguine about the stock market bounce and must make many participants wonder how long the decoupling between yields and equities will continue," said Kenneth Broux, economist at Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets. Gold futures, after slumping about $19 an ounce on Thursday amid the stock market rise and on talk of IMF gold sales, fell another $6.80 an ounce. Research In Motion surged 22% in pre-open trade after the company said its quarterly earnings rose nearly 26% and predicted fiscal first-quarter earnings between 88 cents and 97 cents a share, well above the 82 cents a share that analysts had seen. "The results were better than we thought; the guidance was a lot better than we thought," said Todd Coupland, analyst for CIBC Capital Markets. Sprint Nextel rose nearly 10% in pre-market action. Also on the tech front, Google is in late-stage talks to buy Twitter, according to a report on the blog TechCrunch. Micron Technology slipped 3% in Frankfurt after it reported a narrower quarterly loss but also posted a drop in sales as the semiconductor continued to reel from the demand glut in the memory chip-maker market. Overseas, Asia stocks posted moderate gains, with the Nikkei 225 up 0.3% in Tokyo and the Kospi Composite up 0.5% in Seoul. In Europe, major indexes were split, with the pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 down fractionally while the German DAX 30 rose 0.9%.

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