By James Willhite 

Here's what we're watching ahead of the opening bell on Friday.

-- U.S. stock futures ticked higher, with contracts tied to the S&P 500 up 0.2% a day after the broad-market index notched its first all-time closing high of 2021. Nasdaq-100 futures added 0.4%, suggesting tech shares would also build on Thursday's recovery. Investors have largely focused on prospects for additional government spending once Democrats achieve a unified government after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

The U.S. lost 140,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate was 6.7%, ending seven months of job growth and suggesting the economy is weakening.

What's Coming Up

A slew of blank-check companies are joining the market Friday, including Epiphany Technology Acquisition and SoftBank's SVF Investment.

Market Movers to Watch

-- Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics dropped more than 50% in off-hours trading after mixed results from a study of a drug targeting a form of muscular dystrophy.

-- Tesla's shares are up 4.7% premarket, after yesterday's almost 8% jump made Elon Musk the richest man in the world, pushing him ahead of Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

-- U.S.-listed shares of another electric-car maker, China's Nio, bounced 5.7% higher premarket.

-- Micron Technology's shares jumped 3.9% premarket. KeyBanc raised its price target to $121 from $82 a share. They closed yesterday at $79.11.

-- Shares of software company F5 Networks soared 8.6% in off-hours trading. The company agreed to buy cloud-services provider Volterra for about $440 million in cash in a bid to build an edge platform for enterprises and service providers.

-- Software company Duck Creek Technologies reported a bigger quarterly loss than a year ago while its net sales climbed by more than a quarter. Its shares inched up 0.7% premarket.

-- Boeing shares gained 0.4% ahead of the bell. The plane maker will pay $2.5 billion to resolve a criminal probe as it admitted that employees deceived aviation regulators about safety issues leading to two deadly crashes of the 737 MAX.

Market Fact

U.S. government-bond yields rose faster than many expected after Democrats won control of the Senate. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 1.07% Thursday, according to data from Tradeweb.

Chart of the Day

Bitcoin continued its blistering start to 2021, crossing $40,000 for the first time on Thursday.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 08, 2021 08:53 ET (13:53 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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