Here are the top news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:
1. Dow is down as Walmart is down due to disappointing earnings
Traders on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Source: The New York Stock Exchange
US stock futures fell Thursday after Dow Walmart stock fell more than 4.5% in the premarket amid disappointing gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday erased a loss of 180 points and finished 90 points higher for a new record. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed slightly lower for the second straight session. The S&P 500 made up for losses minutes after the last Fed meeting, indicating a longer simple monetary policy, with the economy nowhere near pre-coronavirus levels.
The Department of Labor reported 861,000 new claims for unemployment benefits for last week, nearly 90,000 more than expected on Thursday morning. Last week’s initial readout of unemployment benefits was revised higher by 55,000 to 848,000. The four-week moving average was 833,250.
2. Walmart lacks revenue, beats revenue; CEO to increase wages
An employee wearing a protective mask arranges shopping carts outside a Walmart store in Duarte, California, USA on Thursday, November 12, 2020.
David Swanson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Walmart reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $ 1.39 per share, which falls short of estimates. Revenue grew 7.3% to a better than expected $ 152.1 billion. The big-box retailer’s e-commerce sales in the US grew 69% and sales in the same store in the US grew 8.6%. Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, said the company will increase the wages of US workers, pushing the hourly average for workers to more than $ 15 an hour.
3. What to Expect From GameStop Hearing with Robinhood, Citadel, Reddit CEOs
Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The heads of Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital will be in Washington Thursday for the highly anticipated GameStop hearing, scheduled for noon ET at the House Financial Services Committee. In prepared comments, Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, said there was no significant activity on WallStreetBets driven by bots or foreign agents last month. Keith Gill, the Reddit and YouTube trader known as “Roaring Kitty,” plans to defend his social media posts that sparked a mania in GameStop stock.
4. How the Texas power grid went down and what could keep it from happening again
Pike Electric service trucks are lined up after a snowstorm on February 16, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas. Winter storm Uri has brought cold weather and power outages to Texas historically as storms have passed across 26 states with a mix of freezing temperatures and precipitation.
Ron Jenkins | Getty Images
According to poweroutage.us, more than 500,000 Texas homes are still without power on Thursday morning, following the historic cold and snow on Sunday night that caused the worst power outages in decades. Millions of people were in the dark at the height of the crisis, which was caused by a confluence of factors. Officials are already calling for investigation. Experts said Texas can take a number of steps to combat future problems, including weathering equipment and increasing the amount of excess supply needed to meet peak power demand.
5. Life expectancy in the US falls one year in a pandemic, the worst since WWII
Cemetery worker Keith Yatcko prepares a grave for burial at the State Veterans Cemetery amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, May 13, 2020.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Life expectancy in the US has dropped by as much as a year in the first half of 2020 as the pandemic caused the first wave of deaths from the coronavirus. Minorities suffered the greatest impact, with black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the CDC. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find such a decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC. It is already known that 2020 was the deadliest year in US history, with more than 3 million deaths for the first time.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live market blog. Read the latest news about the pandemic with our coronavirus blog.