Wall St closed in the green overnight as investors await jobs data results, set to be released on Friday. The S&P 500 rose for the first time in four days, up 0.80%, the Dow Jones, finished the day 0.17% higher and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 1.37%.

Over in Europe, markets closed lower as the STOXX600 fell 0.3% with the majority of the sectors ending Thursday’s session in the red with retail stocks leading losses, down 1.1%. Germany’s DAX lost 0.26%, the French CAC lost 0.1% and over in the UK, the FTSE100 closed slightly lower by 0.02%. Airline group Air France-KLM closed 3.1% lower, with JPMorgan analysts cutting the stock to underweight from overweight.

Locally yesterday, the ASX200 closed 0.07% lower with losses lead by the consumer discretionary and health sectors which lost 0.53% and 0.46% respectively. This was slightly offset by the utilities sector which gained 0.84% by market close yesterday.

What to watch today:

• The Australian share market it set to open lower, with the SPI futures suggesting a fall of 0.13% at market open this morning.
• In terms economic data today, US unemployment rate data will be released tonight at 11:30pm with the consensus and forecast holding at 3.9%, the same as its previous result.
• On the commodities front this morning,
  • Oil is trading 0.60% higher at 69 US dollars and 80 cents a barrel, gold is up 0.21% to 2029 US dollars an ounce and iron ore is trading 1.14% higher at 133 US dollars and 50 cents a tonne.

Trading Ideas:

• Bell Potter maintains a buy rating on Perpetual Ltd (ASX:PPT) and has an unchanged 12-month price target of $27.09. Bell Potter have been highlighting the undervaluation of Perpetual for a while and only recently, Washington H. Soul Pattinson have made a non-binding indicative proposal to acquiree PPT in scrip. This would acquire 100% of Perpetual, with Perpetual Asset Management being demerged and returned to PPT shareholders. Bell Potter would be surprised if further bids for Perpetual did not appear.
• And Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Australian Clinical Labs (ASX:ACL), indicating that the stock price may rise from the close of $2.77 to the range of $3.00-$3.06, on a pattern formed over 27 days, according to the standard principles of technical analysis.