Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. When the levy breaks
A trader works at his desk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at the opening bell on July 18, 2025, in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
Stock futures dropped Friday as traders awaited the monthly U.S. jobs report and weighed President Trump’s modified tariffs. Trump signed an executive order Thursday that modified “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries, with updated duties ranging from 10% to 41%. He told NBC News after the order that he would be open to other offers, but it was “too late” for other nations to avoid tariffs set to kick in next week. “It doesn’t mean that somebody doesn’t come along in four weeks and say we can make some kind of a deal,” he said. Follow live market updates here.
2. July job slip?
=Kiaraliz Irizarry (L) recruits people for jobs at Triton Recovery during the Mega JobNewsUSA South Florida Job Fair held in the Amerant Bank Arena on April 30, 2025 in Sunrise, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Hiring is expected to have slowed substantially in July. A Dow Jones consensus estimate calls for growth of just 100,000, when the monthly tally comes out at 8:30 a.m. ET, which would be the smallest gain since October 2024. Payrolls rose 147,000 in June and averaged 130,000 a month in the first half of the year. Even if the estimates are correct, showing a slowing jobs market, it wouldn’t necessarily draw a response from the Fed, which held a key interest rate steady on Wednesday.
3. Dating a chatbot
Nikolai Daskalov holds up a photo of his AI companion displayed on his phone.
Enrique Huaiquil
Relationships between humans and artificial intelligence are no longer the stuff of science fiction. CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez traveled across the U.S. for the past several months to meet with people who have formed strong relationships with AI bots. These connections can take either romantic or platonic forms, but his reporting shows the real-world impacts. While the rise of this type of companionship makes sense, given AI’s increasing ubiquity in daily life and America’s loneliness epidemic, it can also create ethical and safety concerns.
4. Big Tech results are in
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on June 9, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Investors are digesting Big Tech earnings reports. Apple beat profit and revenue expectations and posted the largest sales growth since late 2021. CEO Tim Cook said about 1 of the company’s 10 percentage points of revenue growth could be attributed to customers buying more ahead of potential tariffs. Amazon shares, however, were under pressure after its outlook for the current quarter fell short of expectations, despite topping estimates for the previous three-month period.
5. A seat at the tray table
A Southwest Airlines seating chart for a Boeing 737 Max 8.
How much will a seat assignment on Southwest Airlines cost you? It depends, but we break it down for you, with the exemptions, here. The airline’s first tickets with assigned seats went on sale this week for trips starting in late January, but there isn’t a set price. Instead, the route, demand, the type of seat, and even whether it’s a window seat or a middle seat, will determine what you’ll pay. Whatever the factors, it will likely add hundreds of dollars to the cost of a family vacation. Seating fees have generated billions of dollars for Southwest’s competitors and its executives are hoping this and other major changes to its business model will also generate a windfall.
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Pia Singh, Anniek Bao, Salvador Rodriguez, Annie Palmer and Kif Lewsing contributed to this article.
