Stocks look to climb on employment report

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks were on course to a slightly higher open Friday as investors found some good news in the mixed October employment report.

Stock futures were up in early trading, with both the blue-chip S&P and tech-laden Nasdaq set to open slightly higher.

The government reported that the economy added 92,000 jobs in October, falling short of expectations, but the unemployment came in surprisingly better than expected, slipping to 4.4 percent, its lowest level in five years.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com forecast an addition of 125,000 jobs to U.S. payrolls, following a disappointing rise of 51,000 in the September reading. The unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 4.6 percent.

Equities have been battered by a string of weak economic reports this week, causing the Dow Jones industrial average to close lower once again Thursday, marking its first five-day losing streak since June 2005.

Economists said that the payroll number or unemployment rate may have to do better than forecasts to turn around market pessimism.

In corporate news, a top executive at Caterpillar (Charts), the U.S. heavy equipment maker and Dow component, said late Thursday he believes 2007 will be a year of "significant slowdown" in the U.S. housing market.

Once-bitter software rivals Microsoft (Charts) and Novell (Charts) came together Thursday to announce a partnership that will allow Linux, the open-source operating system distributed by Novell, to work with Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows software.

Shares of Novell surged 16 percent in regular trading on speculation of the partnership, while shares of Microsoft were off 0.5 percent in early trading in Frankfurt.

The Federal Communications Commission delayed a vote on AT&T's (Charts) purchase of BellSouth (Charts) Thursday evening, the third such postponement due to a deadlock between Republicans and Democrats on the panel. The vote had been set for Friday.

Electronic Arts (Charts), the world's largest video game publisher, posted a surprise quarterly net profit Thursday and forecast a full-year profit, sending its shares up 8 percent in after-hours trading.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates's personal investment vehicle, Cascade Investments, is set to announce a new joint venture with utility-and-energy company PNM Resources (Charts), according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Business software maker CA (Charts) Thursday warned that a restructuring of its sales force resulted in second-quarter new orders falling 10 percent from a year earlier, and it said the drop would hurt full-year profit.

Overseas, stocks closed mostly higher in Asia, with indexes in Australia and Hong Kong reaching record highs before Hong Kong's Hang Seng retreated slightly to still positive levels. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday.

Stocks were also higher in Europe. British Airways (Charts) posted an expected fall in second-quarter profits as it cited the cost of disrupted flights by this summer's terrorism alert. It also announced the sale of its struggling regional unit.

Oil prices were higher, U.S. light crude was up 41 cents to $58.29 a barrel in electronic trading, while Brent crude trading in London was 45 cents higher at $58.32.

Treasury prices tumbled after the jobs report, leaving the yield of the 10-year note near 4.69 percent, up from late Thursday. The dollar jumped in early trading after the report.

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