Facebook, AmerisourceBergen, JPMorgan: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today
January 06 2021 - 9:21AM
Dow Jones News
By Joe Wallace
Here's what we're watching ahead of the opening bell on
Wednesday.
-- U.S. stock futures are slipping as investors react to early
results from Georgia's runoff elections. Nasdaq-100 futures are
taking the biggest hit, off 1.5% on expectations that a
Democratic-controlled Senate would lead to tighter regulations on
tech giants.
Government bonds sold off too, pushing the yield on 10-year
Treasurys above 1% for the first time since March. Read our full
market wrap here.
What's Coming Up
-- The Federal Reserve will release minutes of its December
policy meeting at 2 p.m. ET. The central bank said at the time that
large-scale purchases of government debt and mortgage securities
would continue "until substantial further progress has been made"
toward broader employment and inflation goals.
-- The Energy Information Administration will report how much
oil was in storage in the U.S. last week at 10:30 a.m. Crude
supplies are expected to have fallen. Benchmark U.S. crude futures
are back above $50 a barrel after breaching that level on Tuesday
for the first time since last February on Saudi Arabia's decision
to cut extra barrels of output.
-- Costco Wholesale is due to report December sales results at
4:15 p.m. The warehouse chain enjoyed a bounce in sales to
homebound Americans last year.
Market Movers to Watch
-- Tech stocks including Facebook, Google-owner Alphabet and
Netflix are all down in premarket trading. President-elect Joe
Biden has promised greater scrutiny of tech giants that have
powered the stock-market rally in recent years.
-- AmerisourceBergen's stock jumped 4.1% after the drug company
agreed to buy the majority of Walgreens Boots Alliance's Alliance
Healthcare businesses. Amerisource said it would pay $6.275 billion
in cash and issue 2 million shares to Walgreens in exchange for
European pharmaceutical wholesaler Alliance. Walgreens shares rose
2.3%.
-- UnitedHealth slipped 2% after agreeing to buy health
care-technology firm Change Healthcare for about $7.84 billion in
cash.
-- Tesla shares rose 3.2% ahead of the bell in New York.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley bumped up their price target for the
stock to $810, from $540, after the electric carmaker reported a
record number of vehicle deliveries last year. Tesla shares closed
at $735.11 Tuesday.
-- Shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and
other major lenders are also on the rise. A Democratic-controlled
Washington would boost the possibility of more fiscal stimulus,
says Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors.
That prospect is lifting bond yields, which tends to boost the
profitability of banks' lending books.
-- Moderna shares traded 3.6% higher premarket. The European
Union's main drug regulator cleared the company's vaccine for use,
offering the region a second shot to fight coronavirus.
-- Shares in auto-equipment retailer O'Reilly Automotive dropped
more than 7% premarket.
-- Freeport-McMoRan shares rose 3.5%, suggesting the mining
stock will extend a rally dating back to March. Freeport has
benefited from surging copper prices.
Market Fact
One sign of improving investor sentiment: Expectations for
annual inflation over the next decade climbed above 2% this week
for the first time since 2018. That rate, derived from the
difference between nominal and inflation-protected Treasury yields,
had fallen as low as 0.5% in March.
Chart of the Day
Investors betting on a continued economic rebound are
increasingly looking beyond U.S. stocks. Investing in U.S. stocks,
they say, has increasingly become a concentrated bet on the
technology sector, which contributed more than half of the S&P
500's 18% total return last year.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 06, 2021 09:06 ET (14:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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