Wall Street to open higher after payrolls report

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were set for a higher open on Friday, putting the S&P 500 on track to hold near its record high, after the March payrolls report suggested the economy may be gaining momentum.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 192,000 last month, just shy of the 200,000 forecast, after rising 197,000 in February. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent. With a solid pace of hiring for a second consecutive month, the economy appears to be recovering from a slowdown due to harsh winter weather.

"Overall people are taking this as a sign there isn't some sort of underlying weakness in the economy," said Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones in St. Louis.

"It has fit into people's belief that most of the weakness we saw earlier was due to the weather and not something really changing about the economy."

S&P 500 e-mini futures rose 7.5 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 59 points and Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 19.75 points.

Mylan Inc rose 10.7 percent to $55.19 in premarket trading after a report said the company is looking to acquire Swedish rival Meda AB .

Anadarko Petroleum Corp gained 2.1 percent to $101.10 in premarket. The company said Thursday it would pay more than $5 billion to clean up areas across the United States polluted by nuclear fuel, wood creosote and rocket fuel waste, resolving a long-running lawsuit.

Boeing Inc is considering buying Mercury Systems Inc , a supplier of digital signal and image processing systems to the aerospace and defense industry, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mercury shares jumped 8.8 percent to $14.40 in premarket.

CarMax Inc , fell 3.9 percent to $45.70 before the opening bell after the largest retailer of used cars reported fourth-quarter results.

Halozyme Therapeutics Inc plunged 31 percent to $8 in premarket after the company said it was temporarily halting enrolment of patients and dosing of its cancer drug in a mid-stage trial on patients with pancreatic cancer, after the recommendation of an independent safety committee.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)