Futures are trading flat to lower in the pre market today as investors awaited data on the labor market for clues ahead of a critical employment report and Greece took steps to meet fiscal targets. The Jobs data just released stated:

Highlights
ADP is calling for a 20,000 decline in February private payrolls. The report said weather had only a minimal impact on its results but warns that weather is nevertheless likely to have an effect on the government’s results. Equities firmed slightly in reaction to the report.

Definition
The ADP national employment report is computed from a subset of ADP records that in the last six months of 2008, represented approximately 400,000 U.S. business clients and approximately 24 million U.S. employees working in all private industrial sectors. The data are collected for pay periods that can be interpolated to include the week of the 12th of each month, and processed with statistical methodologies similar to those used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to compute employment from its monthly survey of establishments. ADP also use ADP contracted with Macroeconomic Advisors to compute a monthly report that would ultimately help to predict monthly nonfarm payrolls from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s employment situation. The ADP report only covers private (excluding government) payrolls at this time. As a simplification of the process used by Macroeconomic Advisors, estimates are based upon statistical comparison of ADP growth rates to BLS payroll employment growth rates at the industry level. ADP also adds in the BLS initial claims data for the week just prior to the employment report as part of its estimation procedure. (Automatic Data Processing (ADP)/Macroeconomic Advisers)

Futures started to move marginally higher after the release.

Merger activity remains on the upswing, as Pfizer Inc is set to present a nearly $4 billion offer for German generic-drug maker Ratiopharm GmbH this week, competing against rival bids from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Actavis, sources familiar with the situation said.

After initially climbing in premarket trade, shares of Pfizer reversed and slipped 1.2 percent to $17.39 after the company said its Alzheimer’s drug, Dimebon, being developed with Medivation Inc did not meet co-primary or secondary endpoints in two Phase 3 studies.

Novell Inc surged 28.6 percent to $6.11 after investment fund Elliott Associates offered to buy the business software maker for $2 billion.

Costco Wholesale Corp shares lost 3.8 percent to $59 after the No. 1 U.S. retail warehouse club reported second-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street estimates.

Rival BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc was unchanged at $36.47 after reporting its fourth-quarter results and offering an outlook for 2010.

Shayne Heffernan www.livetradingnews.com

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Mar 3rd, 2010and filed underLatest News, USA.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site