5 things to know before the stock market opens on February 19, 2021

Here are the top news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

US stock futures rallied Friday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq took their biggest one-day losses in the scorching hot month of February. The Dow, breaking a three-day winning streak and falling from a record high, stayed on track for a positive week, which would be its third consecutive time. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are driving three-day losses and are on track for their first losing weeks in the past three weeks.

Bitcoin – which hit more than $ 52,000 this week – hit another record high near $ 53,000 per unit early Friday. After Tesla and other companies recently showed support for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, major financial companies also seemed to be excited about it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC on Thursday that she believes bitcoin is a “highly speculative asset.”

As the House plans to release its $ 1.9 trillion version of President Joe Biden’s blueprint for fighting coronavirus by the end of next week, Yellen told CNBC a major stimulus package is needed to get the economy back to full strength. to get. “The price of doing too little is much higher than the price of something great,” she said. “We think the longer term benefits will far outweigh the costs.” Democrats hope to get their bill through Congress by March 14, when major federal unemployment benefit programs expire.

Biden is expected to announce Friday that the US will spend $ 4 billion on international Covid vaccination efforts. He will make the pledge during his first virtual meeting as president with G-7 leaders. Biden will also urge other countries to spend more money on the global fight against the pandemic.

Later in the day, Biden travels to Michigan to visit Pfizer’s vaccine factory in Kalamazoo, a trip scheduled to take place Thursday but was postponed due to winter weather. Biden made his first domestic trip as president on Tuesday, traveling to Wisconsin for a CNN town hall about the coronavirus.

Shares of Uber fell 3% in the premarket after the UK’s highest court ruled Friday that the company’s drivers there should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. The ruling ends a nearly five-year legal battle between Uber and a group of former drivers in Britain. Uber maintains that its drivers are self-employed and that it acts more like an “agency” connecting them to passengers via an app. The company faced a challenge in its home market of California in November, when voters backed a vote that affirmed app-based food delivery and the status of drivers as independent contractors, not employees.

At Thursday’s GameStop hearing on Capitol Hill, Citadel’s Ken Griffin defended a controversial method brokers are using to make money and said his company would adapt if new regulations banned the practice. Members of Congress spent much of their time indulging in “payment for order flow,” a practice where a brokerage company receives payment from a market maker like Citadel to send the order to them. This model is how Robinhood and other brokers can offer commission-free trading. “I truly believe that payment for order flow is an important source of innovation in the industry,” said Griffin.

– Reuters 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.