Jobs Friday: July payrolls at 8:30 after a narrow Thursday
July non-farm payrolls land at 8:30 ET. Thursday closed with 62 of 100 large caps lower, and Datadog fell 19% on a beat-and-raise.
The July jobs report hits at 8:30 AM ET, and it lands on a tape that was already narrow: 62 of our 100 large caps closed lower Thursday. The most instructive move of the week was Datadog, which beat, raised, and fell 19%.
Payrolls at 8:30, and the number nobody agrees on
The BLS releases July non-farm payrolls at 8:30 AM ET. Consensus is genuinely unsettled: Investing.com carries 88K, Cannon Trading has economists at +85,000, and FinancialJuice shows 80K with a survey range of 40K to 157K. June’s change was 57K — the weakest in four months, and below a May figure that was itself revised down to 129K. Unemployment is seen at 4.2% against 4.2% prior, average hourly earnings at 3.5% year over year against 3.5%. With a spread that wide on the headline, the revisions line may matter as much as the print.
Thursday was a down day carried by a few names
Our breadth read was 38 advancing against 62 declining out of 100 large caps. That fits TheStreet’s Aug 6 midday note: the S&P 500 off 0.19% with only 182 index members green, held up by pockets of tech and energy. A small index move and a two-to-one decline ratio are the same fact stated twice — the heavyweights did the work. Microsoft closed at $499.86, up 2.54%, and Exxon added 2.12%, with no catalyst emerging for either.
Datadog beat, raised, and lost 19%
Datadog closed down 19.03% at $229.29 after Q2 revenue of $1.12B, up 36% year over year and roughly $42M ahead of estimates, with adjusted EPS of $0.65 against about $0.58 expected. Full-year guidance went up, to $4.45–4.47B in revenue. What broke it was the Q3 guide of $1.135–1.145B, which implies slight deceleration, plus free-cash-flow margin narrowing from 29% to 25% — against a stock that was up 71% year to date into the print. SiTime went the other way, up 26.44% to $687.58 on Q2 revenue of $157.4M, up 127%, and Honest Company rose 40.78% to $5.42 after EPS of $0.04 versus $0.02 expected and a raised full-year outlook.
Three places the tape and the story diverge
Uber rose 3.36% to $70.47 on Q2 revenue of $14.19B, up 12%, and GAAP diluted EPS of $1.17 against $0.63 a year earlier — yet Benzinga reports the stock down 14% in 2026, with several analysts cutting targets while keeping Buy ratings, citing the cost of scaling autonomous vehicles. Aspen Aerogels jumped 37.84% to $6.885 despite an adjusted loss of $0.22 versus a $0.20 consensus; the raised outlook and a Q3 EPS guide of −$0.11 to −$0.07 against −$0.13 look like the driver. And the aerospace blow-up was HONA, the recently spun-off Honeywell Aerospace, which cut its annual sales target on supply-chain problems while prioritizing parts for Boeing and Airbus — legacy Honeywell, HON, fell 2.97%, a different security entirely.
What to watch today
- 8:30 AM ET: July non-farm payrolls, unemployment rate (4.2% prior) and average hourly earnings (3.5% y/y prior)
- Revisions to June’s 57K gain and May’s already-marked-down 129K
- SiTime’s Q3 guide of $285–295M revenue — the first quarter to include the Renesas timing business, which closed July 1
- CPI on Wednesday Aug 12 at 8:30 AM ET; PPI on Thursday Aug 13 at 8:30 AM ET
Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.