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A take a look at the day ahead in U.S. and international markets from Mike Dolan Another forecast miss from a U.S. megacap combines with care ahead of January's employment report to keep a cover on stocks into Friday's open - with resilient long-dated Treasuries squashing the yield curve to its flattest for the year.

Much like Microsoft and Alphabet over the previous number of weeks, Amazon dissatisfied Wall Street late Thursday as concern about cloud computing doused revenue and revenue forecasts and sent its stock down 4% over night.

The current underwhelming outlook from the "Magnificent 7" top U.S. tech companies reins in an otherwise upbeat S&P 500, with questions about heavy spends on expert system stimulated again by the development of China's cheap DeepSeek model.

The DeepSeek buzz, by contrast, continues to fire up Chinese stocks. They included another 1%-plus earlier on Friday despite ongoing issues about an installing Sino-U.S. trade war and Monday's deadline for Beijing's retaliatory tariffs.

But the day's macro events will likely take precedence, with the release of the January U.S. employment report and long-lasting modifications of past task development.

likely slowed to 170,000 in January from simply over quarter of million the previous month, partly restrained by wild fires in California and winter throughout much of the country.

Those distortions add a further issue to the readout, which will include annual benchmark modifications, brand-new population weights and updates to the seasonal changes.

The week's sweep of other labor market reports, however, do indicate some cooling of conditions - with task openings falling, layoffs increasing and weekly out of work claims ticking higher.

With the Federal Reserve currently attempting to parse the impact of President Donald Trump's brand-new financial policies, payroll distortions simply cloud the image even further.

And as Fed officials insist they can wait and see for a bit, Fed futures remain trained on 2 more rates of interest cuts this year - resuming about midyear.

The Treasury market is more encouraged though - sustaining the early week's sharp drop in 10-year yields into today's tasks report and seeing the 2-to-10 year yield curve compress to the flattest it's remained in six weeks.

Helping the long end today has actually been assuring signals from the Treasury's quarterly refunding report that a "describing out" of debt auctions to longer maturities is not yet in the works, as numerous had feared.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also firmly insisted the brand-new government's focus would be on getting long-lasting rates down rather than pushing the Fed to ease prematurely.

Reuters analysis reveals Trump has placed holds on tens of billions of dollars in congressionally-approved spending for jobs throughout the U.S. that range from Iowa soybean farmers adopting greener practices to a Virginia railway growth.

Bessent also doubled down on his view the administration wishes to retain a "strong dollar" policy. But he colored that with a sideswipe. "What we put on ´ t desire is other countries to deteriorate their currencies, to control their trade."

But with the Fed on hold, main banks around the globe continued reducing interest rates apace this week - partly on concerns a trade tariff war will weaken their economies.

With a sharp cut in its UK development projection, the Bank of England cut its policy rate by a quarter point on Thursday - with 2 of its policymakers choosing a bigger half point decrease. Sterling weakened initially, but has steadied given that.

Mexico's main bank likewise cut its rates of interest by 50 basis points on Thursday - saying it might cut by a similar magnitude in the future as inflation cools and after the economy contracted slightly late in 2015.

The European Reserve bank, meantime, is expected to release its updated price quote of what it views as a "neutral" rate of interest later on Friday.

That is necessary as it notifies the ECB debate about whether it requires to cut rates below what thinks about neutral to revive the flagging euro zone economy. It's presently seen around 2% - 75bps below the standing policy rate.

In thrall to the payrolls release, the dollar index was consistent on Friday. Dollar/yen briefly notched a new low for the year, nevertheless, as Bank of Japan tightening speculation simmers.

In Europe, stocks stalled near record highs as the heavy earnings season there unfolded.

Banks there have actually a been a standout winner today and again on Friday. Danske Bank, Denmark's biggest lender, was up 7.1% after it published record annual profits and introduce a brand-new share buyback programme.

Key advancements that must supply more instructions to U.S. markets later on Friday: * U.S. January work report, University of Michigan February consumer study, December customer credit; Canada Jan work report; Mexico Jan inflation * European Central Bank updates its quote of "R *" neutral rate of interest * Federal Reserve Board Governors Michelle Bowman and Adriana Kugler speak; Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill speaks * U.S. business revenues: Cboe Global Markets, systemcheck-wiki.de Fortive, Kimco Realty * Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba check outs United States

(By Mike Dolan, modifying by XXXX mike.dolan@thomsonreuters.com)