Stock market today: Wall Street inches higher ahead of the latest data on the labor market

FILE - A man walking on Wall Street approaches the New York Stock Exchange, right, on June 26, 2024, in New York. Shares advanced in Europe on July 1, 2024, with the benchmark in Paris up 2.8% briefly after the far-right National Rally gained a strong lead in first-round legislative elections. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Wall Street was set to kick off a holiday-shortened week with gains early Monday as markets digested an assortment of corporate news while waiting for a trove of labor market data.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose about 0.2% before the bell.

Boeing shares were little changed after the aerospace giant announced that it was buying troubled supplier Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7 billion. Boeing hopes the deal, announced Sunday, will help it improve plane quality and safety amid increasing scrutiny from the government and the airlines who buy its planes. Boeing previously owned Spirit, and the purchase reverses a longtime company strategy of outsourcing key work on its passenger planes.

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Elsewhere, European Union regulators accused social media company Meta Platforms of breaching the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them. Meta, whose shares inched up less than 0.1% before the bell, began giving European users the option in November of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram as a way to comply with the continent’s strict data privacy rules.

A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Online pet store Chewy jumped more than 11% in premarket after Keith Gill — also known as “Roaring Kitty,” the individual at the center of the of the meme stock craze — disclosed in an SEC filing that he is now the company's third-largest shareholder.

Later this week, the Labor Department will report on job openings, layoffs and the broader employment picture. Markets will be closed Thursday for the Fourth of July holiday.

Currency traders watch their computer monitors near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rates at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Shares advanced on Monday in Europe, with the CAC benchmark in Paris up 1.6% at midday after the far-right National Rally gained a strong lead in first-round legislative elections.

Other European markets opened higher, while most Asian markets also gained.

The euro rose sharply before falling back to $1.0742 from $1.0744 as polling agencies suggested the National Rally might win a majority in the lower house of parliament. However the outcome remains uncertain and the voting system is complex.

Germany's DAX climbed 0.5% and in London, the FTSE 100 rose 0.4%.

In Asian trading, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.1% to 39,631.06 after a quarterly survey by the Bank of Japan, called the “tankan,” showed a modest improvement in confidence among the country’s largest manufacturers in April-June.

However the government downgraded its estimate for growth in the first quarter of the year, to a minus 2.9% annual rate from the earlier figure of minus 1.8%.

“Across all industries and firm sizes, business conditions held steady at 12, which is on past form consistent with (quarterly) GDP growth of around 0%,” Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economics said in assessing the tankan. “A renewed slowdown in GDP growth this quarter would be consistent with the slump in industrial production firms were predicting for June.”

The dollar surged further against the Japanese yen and was trading early Monday at 161.26 yen, up from 160.80 yen late Friday.

The Shanghai Composite climbed 0.9% to 2,994.73 after a survey of factory purchasing managers, reported over the weekend, showed conditions remained in contraction for a second straight month.

But a similar private-sector survey of manufacturing activity released Monday showed an improvement in business conditions. The Caixin Manufacturing PMI rose to 51.8 in June on a scale up to 100, compared with 51.7 in the previous month. Readings above 50 are considered to show an expansion.

Hong Kong markets were closed for a holiday.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.2% to 7,750.70. South Korea’s Kospi edged 0.2% higher to 2,804.31 after a private-sector survey showed South Korea’s factory activity was the best since April 2022.

In other dealings, benchmark U.S. crude rose 46 cents to $82 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, added 53 cents to $85.53 a barrel.

On Friday, a flurry of selling late in the day left the S&P 500 0.4% lower and in the red for the week. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%.

Despite the downbeat finish, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq remain near their all-time highs.

The S&P 500 gained 3.5% in June and is up about 14.5% so far this year. The Nasdaq gained about 6% for the month and is up 18.1% this year.