Stocks closed mostly higher yesterday with only the Dow eking out a small loss. The gains were led, once again, by the small-cap Russell 2000 and mid-cap S&P 400 with 1.31% and 1.00% respectively.

But the Nasdaq and S&P 500 were not far behind with 0.94% and 0.47%. And they both made another new all-time high close in the process.

The market shrugged off yesterday's ADP Employment report, which showed a surprise job decline of -33,000 private payroll jobs vs. the consensus for a gain of 103,000. While the ADP report is often looked at as a barometer of what the official Employment Situation report will say by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), it does have a spotty track record, so that could explain it.

Nonetheless, that's a big swing.

The BLS report comes out today at 8:30 AM ET. The consensus is calling for 110,000 new jobs to have been created in June (100,000 in the private sector and 10,000 in the public sector), with the unemployment rate inching up to 4.3% from last month's 4.2%. The participation rate is expected to tick up to 62.5% vs. last month's 62.4%. And average hourly wages are forecast to ease to just 0.3% m/m vs. last month's 0.4%.

In other news, MBA Mortgage Applications rose 2.7% w/w with purchases up 0.1% and refi's up 6.5%.

And the Challenger Job-Cut report fell to 47,999 layoffs vs. last month's 93,816.

Today we'll get the International Trade in Goods report, the PMI Composite Index, the ISM Services Index, Factory Orders, and Weekly Jobless Claims.

But, of course, the main event will be this morning's Employment Situation report.

The White House yesterday announced a new trade deal with Vietnam. That makes 3 done deals (the U.K, China and Vietnam) since the reciprocal tariffs were put on a 90-day pause. The market is expecting to hear deal announcements on India, Japan and South Korea soon.

Even though the 90-day pause will soon be coming to an end, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. has 18 "important trading partners," and that the Administration is "working toward deals with those countries," while also adding that the White House was open to extending the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs to those who have shown "good faith" in ongoing trade negotiations.

Plenty of eyes are on the budget bill. That passed the Senate on Tuesday night. The House is trying to pass it by the President's July 4^th deadline. That leaves just 2 more days.

Whether one is for or against it, the extension of the 2017 tax cuts (assuming it passes the lower chamber) takes a degree of uncertainty away. And could be why the small-caps and mid-caps continue to put up outsized gains. For businesses, a reversal of the corporate tax cut provisions, if not passed and left to expire, would likely hit smaller companies the hardest.

Today should be a busy day, made even busier with the early market close (1:00 PM ET).

The market will be closed tomorrow in observance of the July 4^th Holiday.

With a half-day left, all of the indexes are up for the week, so far. And if all goes well today, we'll see the market notch another up week. If so, that'll make it the 2nd up week in a row for the S&P 500, and the 3rd up week in a row for all the others.

Have a great, long holiday weekend.

See you on Monday,