As expected, Wall Street has dropped at the opening bell.

The major three indices have all dropped by about 0.4%. The S&P 500 remains short of its record high.

Another update from the Financial Times on the extraordinary story of Wirecard, the collapsed German payments company that is now under investigation by authorities in multiple countries.

The FT report (£) said:

German prosecutors suspect Wirecard was looted before its spectacular collapse in June, with $1bn funnelled to opaque partner companies even as the payments group fought allegations of accounting fraud.

According to people familiar with the probe and a document seen by the Financial Times, the embezzlement is suspected to have taken the form of unsecured loans, which Wirecard claimed were for advance payments to merchants processing card transactions through its partners in Asia.

(This reporter cannot wait for the book and film that will surely be made about the company and its spectacular collapse.)

It looks like Wall Street is set to dip at the opening bell in a few minutes’ time after the jobs data showed a slowing recovery - even if it was better than expectations.

Futures suggest the S&P 500 will lose 0.5%, the Nasdaq will fall 0.4% and the Dow Jones industrial average will lose 0.3%.

Sterling is now down by 0.7% against the US dollar in the wake of the jobs numbers.

One pound will buy $1.3061, down from $1.314 early this morning - although there has been some volatility (as ever) as traders digested the non-farm payrolls data.

The euro fell by 0.7% against the dollar, to $1.1799.

The US jobs beat could help the S&P 500 to a new all-time record high in the next few days (if not, perhaps, today). It is only 1.3% off the record level hit in February before the pandemic hit. But it does not all look rosy for the US economy.

Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors, said:

Does today’s number imply economic conditions are significantly improved? No - it simply suggests the labour market was static in July, showing no signs of renewed weakness that the increase in Covid-19 cases had threatened.

Nonetheless, with Congress failing to agree on a new fiscal stimulus package yet, the risk is that a policy failure drains the tentative strength that had been creeping back into the economy in recent months. With the unemployment rate still sitting above 10%, the pressure in Congress is still on.

The data suggest the recovery will still continue, albeit not particularly quickly, said Andrew Hunter, senior US economist at Capital Economics. He said:

The 1,763,000 increase in non-farm payrolls in July confirms that the resurgence in new virus cases caused the economic recovery to slow, but also underlines that it has not yet gone into reverse. With new infections now trending clearly lower again and high-frequency activity indicators showing tentative signs of a renewed upturn, employment should continue to rebound over the coming months.

Unsurprisingly given the renewed restrictions on bars and restaurants in many states, the slowdown was driven by the leisure and hospitality sector.

The unemployment rate has now fallen for three months in a row, but it remains above the 10% peak of the Great Recession and is three times the 3.5% rate from February, before the spread of the pandemic in the US.

July’s jobs increase was less than the 4.8m jobs added in June and 2.7m added in May.

The largest gains were in leisure and hospitality, which increased by 592,000 as coronavirus restrictions were lifted. Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 502,000. Despite the gains over the last three months, employment in food services and drinking places is down by 2.6m since February.

Read the full report here:

The jobs data, which suggest the recovery is slowing down, could add to pressure for more stimulus from the US government amid negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over further stimulus measures.

Here is the Reuters take:

US employment growth slowed considerably in July amid a resurgence in new Covid-19 infections, offering the clearest evidence yet that the economy’s recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic was faltering.

The unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1% in June, but it has been biased downward by people misclassifying themselves as being “employed but absent from work.” At least 31.3m people were receiving unemployment checks in mid-July.

The labor market step-back is more bad news for President Donald Trump, who is lagging in opinion polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the 3 November election.

More reactions from economists and commentators who are suggesting the headline figures don’t quite tell the full story:

This chart shows just how bad it is for the US economy, despite the big jobs rebound. If the red line is anything other than a “V” it means a protracted period of gloom.

US President Donald Trump is busying himself with tweets about China and Joe Biden, but others are reacting to the jobs data.

First up, investors appear to have welcomed the better-than-expected data: US stock market futures have turned positive after falling earlier. Safe-haven gold prices have dipped and the dollar has firmed further.

Justin Wolfers, the former economics adviser to Barack Obama, points out that the US economy is improving, but from the lowest of bases:

Some interesting detail on the shape of the unemployment crisis hitting America:

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said:

These improvements in the labor market reflected the continued resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In July, notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, government, retail trade, professional and business services, other services, and health care.

The number of unemployed people fell by 1.4m to 16.3m - although that still represents 10.6m more people out of work since February, when the pandemic first hit the US.

Another key indicator is unemployment, which has skyrocketed during the pandemic to levels not seen since at least the second world war.

The unemployment rate hit 11.1% in June, down from 14.7% in April. Economists on average expect a further decline to 10.5%.

High unemployment is one of the most troubling indicators for an incumbent government during an election year, which is why Donald Trump has greeted previous blowout jobs numbers with glee.

US non-farm payrolls data are up shortly, in one of the most closely watched regular data releases across the world.

The pandemic has caused serious disruption to the US economy economists’ attempts to understand what is going on, which has resulted in a series of unexpected readings.

Nevertheless, this month’s data (covering July) is expected to show the US private sector added 1.6m jobs, according to the latest adjustment to economists’ consensus forecasts compiled by Reuters.

Last month showed a quite staggering 4.8m jobs added - the largest ever single-month increase in the number of jobs in the US - although some economists think this reflects heightened labour market churn as much as it shows an accelerating rebound.

Goldman Sachs has lowered its quarterly net earnings figure to $197m, compared to the $2.25bn previously reported, as it took account of the massive settlement related to alleged wrongdoing in the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The bank said in a filing it had set aside $2.96bn for potential legal and regulatory costs, up from the $945m announced on 15 July with its second-quarter earnings.

On 24 July, the bank agreed to pay the Malaysia government $3.9bn to settle a criminal probe over its role in the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal.

US prosecutors allege that there were four phases of the 1MDB fraud. Goldman Sachs was allegedly a key part of two of those. The US bank arranged and underwrote three bond offerings worth $6.5bn in 2012 and 2013 – earning an unusually large $600m in fees.

Tim Leissner, a former partner at the bank, has already pleaded guilty to bribery, conspiracy and money laundering charges. Another banker, Roger Ng, is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty, while a third, Andrea Vella, has been banned from the US banking industry.

British Airways-owner IAG is the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 today so far. The company faces the prospect of more travel bans as the pandemic waxes, and it is also going through one of the biggest redundancy programmes of any company in the UK this year.

More than 6,000 British Airways staff have accepted voluntary redundancy as the airline moves to tell thousands more cabin crew and ground staff whether or not they will keep their jobs or face pay cuts, writes the Guardian’s Mark Sweney.

The airline, which is seeking to make up to 12,000 job cuts to slash costs as the coronavirus pandemic hammers the travel market, was on Friday sending letters to affected staff who have not taken voluntary redundancy telling them if they would lose their jobs.

You can read the full report here:

AstraZeneca, the UK-headquartered drug company, has signed an agreement with Japan to supply up to 120m doses of a potential Covid-19 vaccine.

The deal is the latest move in the scramble to secure access to the AZD1222 vaccine, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford. The vaccine showed promising results in phase 2 trials, and is moving to large-scale human trials in Brazil and South Africa.

Japanese pharmaceuticals company JCR will make the vaccine on behalf of AstraZeneca, and Japan will also import doses from overseas as part of the deal.

Other Japanese pharma companies, Daiichi Sankyo and Meiji Seika, will also support the vaccine supply effort, AstraZeneca said in a statement, via Reuters.

The energy regulator has lowered winter energy bills for 15m UK homes by reducing its energy price cap to record lows after wholesale energy market prices tumbled during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ofgem will lower the cap on default dual-fuel energy tariffs for 11m households by £84, from an average of £1,126 a year to a record low of £1,042 from this October. It will also lower the cap on energy bills for customers using pre-payment energy meters by an average of £94 a year, from £1,164 to £1,070 a year.

You can read the full report here:

With chancellor Rishi Sunak today signalling that there is unlikely to be any extension to the furlough scheme, it appears the UK economy could be about to experience the delayed unemployment reaction from a historic recession.

Where does that leave the Bank of England, which is already at the limits of what was thought possible in monetary policy terms a decade ago?

Bank of England governor Dave Ramsden (pictured) has been commenting today on the possibility of negative interest rates: the idea that commercial banks pay the central bank to deposit their money, theoretically giving them a strong incentive to lend money out.

“I’m not going to get into speculation about where we might be in November but we do have further headroom,” Ramsden told CNBC in an interview, a day after the BoE said it saw no immediate case to cut interest rates below zero.

The Bank on Thursday surprised some observers by including analysis of negative rates in its monetary policy report, an indication it is taking the idea very seriously.

The withdrawal of the furlough scheme - which acts as a fiscal stimulus - may mean that the Bank of England feels more monetary policy support is needed, but with interest rates at a record low and the size of the quantitative programme resulting in diminishing returns negative rates may be one of the only remaining options.

The Bank is not looking at making equity purchases, Ramsden added.

At mid-morning European stock markets have lost even the slight hint of optimism from the opening hour.

The FTSE 100 has now lost 0.3%, or 20 points - another nine points down and it will fall below the 6,000 mark.

Germany’s Dax index has lost 0.1% and France’s Cac 40 is down by 0.5%. In Italy sharse are down by 1%.

US stock market indices are pointing to a 0.4%-0.5% drop on the S&P 500, the Dow Jones industrial averagge and the Nasdaq.

Apple shares are also down by 0.8% in pre-market trading, suggesting that today may not be the day that it becomes the first company to hit a $2tn market capitalisation - it closed at $1.948tn last night.

There isn’t much movement overall on the FTSE 100, but Hikma Pharmaceuticals is enjoying a strong day - now up 10% - after it said that the pandemic had prompted hospitals and distributors to stock up on drugs.

Hikma specialises in making unbranded generic drugs, and rising demand caused it to raise its profit forecasts for the year on Friday.

In a further boost, the company has started making remdesivir, an approved treatment for Covid-19 from US-based Gilead, Reuters reported.

The deal, for an undisclosed amount at its facility in Portugal, with the first batches of the antiviral drug expected “soon”.

Gilead will distribute the treatment, which was the first to be allowed to treat the illness caused by the new coronavirus. CEO Siggi Olafsson told Reuters:

The terms of the deal are confidential, we are simply a contract manufacturer for Gilead - they order products from us as they expect the sales to be.

Is there a more exclusive club than the “centibillionaires”? We think not, but it has added another member: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s fortune has passed $100bn (£76bn) for the first time, after Facebook’s shares surged on news it is to launch a rival - called Instagram Reels - to the video-sharing app TikTok.

Zuckerberg owns a 13% stake in Facebook and his net worth passed $100bn as shares in the social network surged by 6% on investor optimism over the prospects of the TikTok rival.

The 36-year old joins the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, as the only people who have centibillionaire status, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

You can read the full story here:

There was some interesting data from Germany earlier this morning, suggesting that the economic recovery from the coronavirus lockdown is actually proceeding faster than expected (albeit from a very deep recession).

German industrial production grew 8.9% in June compared to May, according to the Federal Statistics Office - a faster increase than the 8.1% expected by economists.

German exports also rose by 14.9% in June compared to the previous month, faster than expected.

Similarly, industrial production in France jumped by 12.7% month-to-month in June, beating the consensus for a 8.4% increase.

Holger Schmieding, an economist at Berenberg, the investment bank, said:

Following an unprecedented plunge in March and April, Germany now seems to recover a bit faster than we had initially expected. In the absence of a major accident, Germany can recoup at least half the second quarter drop in GDP in the third quarter already.

After a cumulative drop of 25% in March and April, German industry raised it output by a total of 17% in May and June. Although the badly hit capital goods sector, which includes machine tools and cars, continues to lag behind, these key industries have started to rebound strongly.

Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, cautioned that while the recovery in France and Germany will continue, it could be a lot slower than the initial pace of the rebound suggested. He said:

These numbers mean that the level production remained just over 10% below its pre-virus levels at the end of the second quarter. Looking ahead, base effects will ensure a robust increase through the third quarter as a whole, but we suspect the momentum in production and new orders for capital goods, which includes cars, will stall in the near term. In other words, the recovery from here will be slow and uneven.

The FTSE 100 is pretty much flat in the early exchanges, gaining 0.1%.

The biggest gainer is Hikma, up more than 7% after it reported that the pandemic had boosted pharmaceutical sales.

Hargreaves Lansdown, the online investments broker, is up 3.8% after reporting a jump in full-year earnings thanks to increased share trading during the crisis - even though the size of the assets managed through its platform was hit.

In Germany the Dax index has gained 0.3%, while France’s Cac 40 is flat and Spain’s Ibex has lost 0.1%.