5 things to know before the stock market opens on February 26, 2021

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

US stock futures were choppy as tech stocks tried to recover from Thursday’s defeat, which dragged the Nasdaq down 3.5% from its worst one-day performance since October. Tesla fell back slightly in Friday’s premarket, a day after falling 8% in a brutal week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 559 points, or 1.8%, from the high of the previous session on Thursday. The Dow had its worst day in nearly a month, as did the S&P 500, which lost nearly 2.5%. The culprit behind the sell-off was the rapid rise in bond yields.

All three stock benchmarks tracked weekly losses. Ahead of the last trading day in February, the Nasdaq clung to a gain for the month, which started off strong. The Nasdaq is down nearly 7% from its February 12 high. The Dow and S&P 500 both remain firmly in the green this month. However, the S&P 500 was down nearly 2.7% from its latest record, also on February 12.

The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds fell Friday morning but remained above 1.4% after rising to 1.6% in the previous session to its highest level since February 2020 and more than 0.5% higher since the end of January. The spike in 10-year yields, used as a measure of mortgage rates and car loans, was driven by expectations of improving economic conditions as coronavirus vaccines are rolled out, and fears of higher inflation.

A new round of government stimulus controls, approved in December, saw personal income hit its largest monthly gain since April 2020, although inflation remained moderate. The Department of Commerce reported Friday morning that personal income increased by 10% in January, slightly higher than expectations. The inflation of personal consumption expenditure was in line with the estimates of 1.5%.

Inflation concerns are fueled by the thought that the $ 1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill – seen by the House of Representatives Friday – on top of accelerating growth could overheat the economy. Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to push through their emergency measure, including a federal minimum wage increase to $ 15 an hour, with no GOP backing. However, an important impartial official, the Senate MP, ruled that Democrats cannot include the increase in the minimum wage in the bill. The decision means that the Senate will likely pass a different version of the bill than the House, and representatives will have to approve the plan a second time.

A key FDA advisory panel will vote Friday on whether or not to recommend approval of Johnson & Johnson’s one-time Covid vaccine for emergency use, which would help pave the way for a third preventive treatment in the US. While the entire FDA doesn’t have to follow the vaccine commission recommendation, it often does. During similar requests from Pfizer and Moderna for vaccines, the FDA cleared those companies’ two-shot regimens a day after its panel of outside medical advisers cleared emergency use.

As more and more Americans are vaccinated and the economy opens up more fully, companies like DoorDash, which has benefited from the stay-at-home trade, could be hurt. In its first report as a publicly traded company, the food delivery service told shareholders it expects some of the tailwinds it experienced from stay-at-home orders in the US will reverse once the country gets the virus under control. Shares fell 10% in the premarket on Friday. Even with that drop, DoorDash would still be up nearly 50% from its December offer price of $ 102 per share. While DoorDash reported fourth-quarter revenue of $ 970 million late Thursday at the end of Thursday, which was better than estimates, it also reported an adjusted loss per share of $ 2.67.

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