Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:
1. Dow to fall as Walmart slips on disappointing earnings
Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Source: The New York Stock Exchange
US stock futures fell on Thursday after Dow stock Walmart fell 4.5% on the premarket on disappointing gains. Wednesday’s Dow Jones Industrial Average made up a 180 point loss and ended up 90 points higher, another record close. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed slightly lower for the second time in a row. The S&P 500 reduced losses after minutes from the Fed’s last meeting, signaling a longer loose monetary policy as the economy was nowhere near pre-coronavirus levels.
The Department of Labor will publish its weekly unemployment claims report one hour before the opening bell at 8:30 a.m. CET. Economists expect 773,000 new claims for unemployment benefits in the past week. That would be 20,000 fewer than 793,000 initial applications in the previous week, which brought little relief to the declining Covid cases.
2. Walmart Misses Revenue, Beats Revenue; CEO to increase wages
A worker wearing a protective mask arranges shopping carts outside a Walmart store in Duarte, California, the United States, on Thursday, November 12, 2020.
David Swanson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Walmart reported adjusted earnings of $ 1.39 per share for the fourth quarter, which was below estimates. Revenue rose 7.3% to a better than expected $ 152.1 billion. The big box retailer’s e-commerce sales in the US increased 69% and sales in the same store in the US increased 8.6%. Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, said the company will raise US workers’ wages and raise the average hourly employee to over $ 15 an hour.
3. What to Expect from the GameStop Hearing with Robinhood, Citadel and Reddit CEOs
Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The heads of Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel, and Melvin Capital will be in Washington for the much-anticipated GameStop hearing on Thursday, scheduled to begin on the House Financial Services Committee at 12 p.m. ET. In prepared remarks, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said that no significant activity at WallStreetBets was carried out by bots or foreign agents in the past month. Keith Gill, the Reddit and YouTube trading star known as “Roaring Kitty,” plans to defend his social media posts that helped spark a mania in GameStop stocks.
4. How the Texas power grid went down and what could stop it from happening again
Pike Electric Service Trucks line up after a snow storm in Fort Worth, Texas on February 16, 2021. Winter Storm Uri has historically brought cold weather and power outages to Texas as storms with a mixture of freezing temperatures and precipitation swept across 26 states.
Ron Jenkins | Getty Images
More than 500,000 households in Texas are still without power on Thursday morning after the historic Sunday night cold and snow that caused the state’s worst blackouts in decades, according to poweroutage.us. Millions of people have been in the dark at the height of the crisis caused by a confluence of factors. Officials are already calling for an investigation. Experts said Texas can take a number of steps to combat future problems, including weathering equipment and increasing the oversupply needed to meet peak electricity needs.
5. US life expectancy falls by a year in a pandemic, worst since World War II
Cemetery worker Keith Yatcko was preparing a grave for a burial at State Veterans Cemetery when the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak broke out in Middletown, Connecticut, United States on May 13, 2020.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Life expectancy in the US dropped an amazing year in the first half of 2020 as the pandemic caused the first wave of coronavirus deaths. Minorities had the greatest influence, with black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics nearly two years on Thursday, according to preliminary estimates by the CDC. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find such a drop,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC. It is already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in US history. For the first time, more than 3 million people were killed.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live market blog. Find out about the latest pandemics on our coronavirus blog.