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Stock market news live updates: Stock futures point to a lower open

Emily McCormick
·Reporter
·7 min read

Stock futures fell in pre-market trading as traders considered details of President-elect Joe Biden’s newly unveiled stimulus proposal and weighed the likelihood of the package getting advanced quickly through Congress. COVID-19 concerns also flared anew as stay-in-place restrictions tightened across parts of Europe, and new data showed U.S. retail sales unexpectedly fell for a third straight month in December.

Contracts on all three major indexes traded lower Friday morning, extending declines from a day earlier. Both the Dow and Nasdaq hit record intraday highs earlier before closing lower.

Late Thursday, Biden outlined his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief proposal, which included a host of additional relief measures to add to the provisions included in the $900 billion package Congress passed in December.

Biden’s proposal, designated the American Rescue Plan, seeks to offer stimulus payments of $1,400 to most Americans, increase enhanced federal unemployment benefits by $100 to $400 per week and extend these through the end of September, and provide $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, which had been excluded from Congress’s latest package. It also seeks to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and provide additional funds to schools and to ramp up COVID-19 testing and vaccination, among other provisions.

The overall size of the package was largely in line with what investors had been anticipating from the proposal, and would be rivaled only by the $2.2 trillion relief from the CARES Act last spring. Whether or not the package will actually get advanced in the near-term is the next key question for markets, some pundits noted.

“We’ve got to distinguish between willingness and ability. I have no doubt in my mind that the incoming Biden administration wants to go big. They want to go big on relief, they want to go big on infrastructure, they want to go big on local and state government, and for good reason,” Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens College at Cambridge University and chief economic adviser to Allianz, told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. “But they have a razor thin majority in Congress, razor thin in the Senate. And getting that through is not going to be easy. Add to that, there’s questions about the impeachment process, there’s questions about nominations, there’s COVID.

“So the market, I think, has priced in a big package. That is consistent with what the Biden administration wants to do. The question that the market is going to have to cope with is, is it able to do so given what else the Senate has to look at in the next few weeks and months,” he added.

Still, support to financial markets and the economy has come from multiple fronts during the pandemic, and many members of the Federal Reserve, for their part, have recently doubled down on their commitment to keeping crisis-era policies in place for the time being. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said during a webinar on Thursday that he believed the U.S. economy was still “far from our goals,”and that “now is not the time to be talking about exit” when it came to considering the Fed’s thinking around its massive, pandemic-era asset-purchase program.

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8:37 a.m. ET: Producer prices tick up only slightly in December as inflation stays muted

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly producer price index (PPI) increased just 0.3% in December after a 0.1% rise in November, missing expectations for a 0.4% monthly rise, according to Bloomberg consensus data.

A 0.1% drop in prices for final demand services weighed on the index, while goods prices increased 1.1% during December for the largest rise since May. Much of that increase came, in turn, from a jump in prices for energy, which firmed at the end of the year. Excluding more volatile food and energy prices, the PPI rose just 0.1% month-over-month and 1.2% year-over-year, with both coming in slower than anticipated.

—

8:30 a.m. ET: Retail sales unexpectedly drop for a third straight month

U.S. retail sales unexpectedly dropped in December as consumer spending lost steam during the final months of the year.

The total value of retail sales dropped 0.7% in December from November after a downwardly revised 1.4% drop in November, the Commerce Department said Friday. Still, retail sales were up 2.9% year-over-year.

The drop came as non-store retailers – largely comprising e-commerce stores – dipped 5.8% in December, giving back some recent monthly gains. Non-store retailer sales were still up 19.2% year-over-year, however.

Electronics and appliance store sales also fell sharply, dropping 4.9% during the month. Food services and drinking places saw sales down another 4.5%, extending a stretch of weakness amid tougher lockdown restrictions.

—

7:25 a.m. ET: Stock futures dip

Here were the main moves in markets, as of 7:25 a.m. ET:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): 3,775.25, down 16 points or 0.42%

  • Dow futures (YM=F): 30,762.00, down 147 points or 0.48%

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): 12,877.75, down 23.25 points or 0.18%

  • Crude (CL=F): -$0.74 (-1.38%) to $52.83 a barrel

  • Gold (GC=F): -$3.80 (-0.21%) to $1,847.60 per ounce

  • 10-year Treasury (^TNX): +2.5 bps to yield 1.104%

—

7:16 a.m. ET: JPMorgan Chase posts record quarterly profit as trading, investment banking activity jumps

JPMorgan Chase (JPM), the largest U.S. bank by assets, posted record fourth-quarter profit that topped estimates as trading and investment-banking activity helped boost overall results yet again at the end of last year.

Earnings totaled $3.79 per share, growing from the $2.57 the company reported in the same period last year, and beating the $2.62 consensus analysts expected, according to Bloomberg data. Adjusted revenue of about $30.2 billion grew 3% over last year, and was driven by a 15% jump in fixed-income trading revenue and 32% surge in equities sales and trading revenue. Investment banking revenue increased 37% to more than $2 billion.

JPMorgan’s profits during the quarter also benefited from a release of reserves for credit losses, with virtually all the big banks last year having set aside additional capital to brace for potential customer defaults.

“While we reported record profits of $12.1 billion, we do not consider the reserve takedown of $2.9 billion to represent core or recurring profits,” CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement. “While positive vaccine and stimulus developments contributed to these reserve releases this quarter, our credit reserves of over $30 billion continue to reflect significant near-term economic uncertainty and will allow us to withstand an economic environment far worse than the current base forecasts by most economists.”

—

6:01 p.m. ET Thursday: Stock futures open higher

Here were the main moves in markets, as of 6:03 p.m. ET Thursday:

  • S&P 500 futures (ES=F): 3,794.75, up 3.5 points or 0.09%

  • Dow futures (YM=F): 30,932.00, up 23 points or 0.07%

  • Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): 12,918.75, up 17.75 points or 0.14%

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at Wall Street on January 12, 2021 in New York City. - US stocks on January 11, 2021 retreated from records set last week as political uncertainty, including efforts to remove President Donald Trump from power, has finally shaken investors. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at Wall Street on January 12, 2021 in New York City. - US stocks on January 11, 2021 retreated from records set last week as political uncertainty, including efforts to remove President Donald Trump from power, has finally shaken investors. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

—

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