Before Market Opens: 9 things to know at 9 am on June 3, 2022

Wall Street ended sharply higher on Thursday, led by Tesla, Nvidia and other mega-cap growth stocks in a choppy session ahead of a key jobs report due on Friday. Tesla, Nvidia and Meta Platforms each rose more than 4%, fueling gains in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Amazon rallied 3.1% and Apple added 1.7%. The S&P 500 climbed 1.84% to end the session at 4,176.82 points. The Nasdaq gained 2.69% to 12,316.90 points, while Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.33% to 33,248.28 points.

Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Friday morning trade following gains overnight on Wall Street. Investors will also be looking ahead to the release of US jobs data for May. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 gained 1.23% as shares of Fast Retailing soared close to 4%. The Topix index gained 0.73%. The Kospi in South Korea edged 0.79% higher, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.67%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.52% higher.

Indian equity benchmarks managed to end a volatile session in the green on Thursday — a second back-to-back rise — powered by oil & gas and IT shares. Weakness in financial stocks, especially the HDFC twins, played spoilsport, limiting the upside for the main indices. The Sensex ended 436.9 points or 0.8 percent higher at 55,818.1 and the Nifty50 settled at 16,628, up 105.3 points or 0.6 percent from its previous close.

At 8:20 am, the SGX Nifty was trading 163 points or 1 percent higher at 16,793, indicating a gap-up opening for the Indian markets.

Oil prices were roughly unchanged on Friday, clinging to gains made in the previous session on doubts that producers belonging to OPEC+ can hike their crude output enough to make up for lost supply from Russia. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 1 cent at $116.88 a barrel at 0112 GMT, while Brent crude futures were up 7 cents at $117.68 a barrel.

The trade deficit in May 2022 widened to $23.33 billion, while the country's merchandise exports grew by 15.46 percent year-on-year to $37.29 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said on June 2. The trade deficit, in the same month last year, stood at $6.53 billion. The period was marked by the onset of a brutal second COVID-19 wave, which had dampened the international trade.

The rupee ended lower in the previous session but the fall of the domestic unit was capped as crude oil prices declined and the equity market logged gains. The rupee ended 8 paise lower at 77.61 per dollar on June 2.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have net sold ₹451.82 crore worth of shares, whereas domestic institutional investors (DIIs) remained net buyers, to the tune of ₹130.63 crore worth of shares on June 2, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

Gold prices rose as the dollar weakned against its global peers. Gold prices scaled a one-month peak on June 3, supported by a lower US dollar, which also put bullion on track for a third straight weekly gain, reported news agency Reuters.