Strong gains in Europe helped push U.S. stock futures sharply higher Wednesday morning as Wall Street waits for a closely-watched jobs report and a few other economic data points this morning.
As of 7:35 a.m. in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures jumped 96 points, or 0.96%, to 10102, the S&P 500 index futures were up 12 points to 1060.20 and the Nasdaq 100 futures rose 23 points to 1789.50.
The major European indices were up as much as 1.75% in mid-day trading on that side of the Atlantic following strong earnings results out of entertainment company Vivendi (VIA: 35.49 ,0.00 ,0.00%).
Also lifting European equities was the mining and materials sectors on the back of a more than 2% rise in the price of copper overnight.
U.S.-based investors however will most likely trade heavily on the ADP private-sector jobs report out at 8:15 a.m. ET. With the recently poor economic news, economists expect that the U.S. economy created a modest 13,000 private sector jobs in August compared with the 42,000 created in July.
The ADP report is the first of three pieces of jobs-related economic data out this week, culminating with the Labor Department's jobs report on Friday.
Also out this morning will the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index and construction spending figures from the Commerce Department, both out at 10 a.m. ET.
The world's major automakers such as Ford (F: 11.33 ,0.00 ,0.00%), General Motors and Toyota (TM: 67.85 ,0.00 ,0.00%) will also report monthly sales starting at around 12 p.m. ET.
In commodities, oil futures climbed 60 cents to $72.52 a barrel while gold rose $5.70 to $1,255.90 a troy ounce.
On Tuesday, the Dow rose 4.99 points, or 0.05%, to 10014.72, the S&P 500 gained 0.41 points, or 0.04%, to 1049.33 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.94 points, or 0.28%, to 2114.03. The FOX 50 added 1.62 points, or 0.21%, to 761.83.
