Stocks closed higher yesterday. After opening lower, they erased those early morning losses shortly thereafter. The indexes dipped again in the afternoon. But finished in the green by the close.

It was a notable performance ahead of today's April 2^nd tariffs' announcement.

There's still some uncertainty about what the Trump Administration will unveil today. One report suggested the Administration is considering tariffs of roughly 20% on most U.S. imports, while others say country-by-country reciprocal tariffs are still being considered.

Either way, comments yesterday suggested tariffs would apply immediately, once they are announced.

But I'm reminded of what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said recently: "I am optimistic that on April 2, some of the tariffs may not go on because a deal is pre-negotiated, or once countries receive their reciprocal tariff number, right after that, they will come to us and want to negotiate it down."

Israel, for example, announced yesterday afternoon that they would remove all tariffs on imports from the U.S. Granted, tariffs on U.S. goods into Israel are quite small. But it shows how other countries can lessen the reciprocal tariffs placed on them by simply reducing or removing the tariffs they have on the U.S.

The White House is expected to make the tariffs announcement at 3:00 PM ET.

In other news, the PMI Manufacturing Index slipped to 50.2 vs. last month's 52.7, but was above views for 49.8.

The ISM Manufacturing Index slipped as well to 49.0 vs. last month's 50.3 and estimates for 49.6.

Construction Spending rose 0.7% m/m vs. last month's -0.5% pace and the consensus for 0.4%. The y/y rate came in at 2.9% vs. last month's print of 3.3%.

And the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report (or JOLTS for short) came in at 7.568 million job openings vs. last month's 7.762M and expectations for 7.600M.

But the jobs report everybody is really waiting for is Friday's Employment Situation report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Last month's (February) unemployment rate came in at 4.1%, with 151,000 new jobs being created. This month's report is expected to show the unemployment rate at 4.2%, with 131,000 new jobs being created.

One of the big questions for this report will be the potential influence of fired government workers. Last month's report only showed -10,000 job declines by the Federal Government. A smaller number than feared given all of the talk of government worker layoffs. Although, the February report only included a portion of the first half of the month, the additional layoff announcements in the back half of the month, not to mention the first half of March, are likely to show up in Friday's numbers.

We'll also hear from Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Friday when he speaks before the Society of Advancing Business and Writing Annual Conference in Arlington, Virginia. No word on whether he'll mention anything about that morning's jobs report. But he might. Same with the recently announced tariffs, which will be two days old at that point.

In the meantime, there's plenty of other news to get thru until then, including today's MBA Mortgage Applications, the ADP Employment Report (which is often looked at as a precursor to Friday?s BLS report), and Factory Orders.

But the big news today will be this afternoon's tariffs announcement.

See you tomorrow,