Dow Jones Futures Up After Record Finish; Plus FB, AMZN, GM and These Top Stories

Garrett Baldwin

Stock market today, July 3, 2014: Dow Jones futures edged higher this morning (Thursday) by 0.1%, following a DJI record finish on Wednesday. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures also signaled gains, up 0.12% and 0.24% respectively.

This morning, the Labor Department announced that the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 6.1%, as the economy added another 288,000 jobs, crushing street estimates of 215,000.

Here's what you should know is going on in the stock market today to make your Thursday profitable:

• Deal Happy: TechCrunch reports that Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) has purchased online advertising specialist LiveRail for between $400 million to $500 million in an effort to boost its video advertising tools. LiveRail supplies an ad platform that connects marketers' video ads to relevant customers and has a strong existing client roster that includes Major League Baseball, ABC, and Gannett. The company facilitates roughly seven billion video ads each month.

• Today's Economic Calendar: Today's busy schedule includes the U.S. employment report, jobless claims, a report on international trade, multiple announcements on U.S. bonds, and the EIA Natural Gas report.

• Dovish: During a speech at the International Monetary Fund headquarters on Wednesday, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said that monetary policy actions like raising interest rates face "significant limitations" as a means of reducing financial risks, and voiced her discomfort in doing so. Yellen argued that raising interest rates at the height of the U.S. housing bubble would have done even greater damage to the U.S. economy. Instead, Yellen views monetary policy as a tool to help weather the storm and to shore up the financial system.

• Regulators Circle Amazon: E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) has entered a legal spat with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the company's policies regarding inadvertent purchases made through mobile applications and devices. The Federal agency wants Amazon to adopt a similar agreement to the one followed by Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) in January. At the time, Apple agreed to settle by paying $32.5 million in customer relief on grounds that the company failed to provide enough controls to prevent children from making purchases without adult consent.

Garrett Baldwin

About the Author

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Garrett Baldwin is a globally recognized research economist, financial writer, and consultant with degrees from Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, and Indiana University. He is a seasoned financial and political risk analyst, with a focus on stocks, hedge funds, private equity, blockchain, and housing policy. He has conducted risk assessment projects for clients in 27 countries, and consulted on policy and financial operations for some of the nation's largest financial institutions, including a $1.5 trillion credit fund, a $43 billion credit and auto loan giant, as well as two of the largest Wall Street banks by assets under management.

Garrett joined Money Map Press as an economist and researcher in 2011, specializing in alternative strategies with an emphasis on fundamental and technical analysis.

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