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The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 logged all-time highs yesterday on an intraday and closing basis. The Nasdaq Composite and Russell 2000 fell just shy of doing the same. Clearly, investors have a lot to be thankful for ahead of this year's Thanksgiving holiday.
The market will be closed Thursday. On Friday the stock market will close at 1:00 p.m. ET and the Treasury market will close at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Today is a full day of trading, and there is a fullness of news already on which to trade that spans the political, corporate, and economic spectrums.
President-elect Trump rounded out his economic team with the news that he is tapping Keven Hassett to lead the National Economic Council and is nominating Jamieson Greer, who worked under Robert Lighthizer in the president-elect's first term, for U.S. Trade Representative.
Autodesk (ADSK), Dell (DELL), CrowdStrike (CRWD), HP Inc. (HPQ), and Workday (WDAY) all reported their quarterly results after yesterday's close. They are all trading lower in pre-market action along with retailer Nordstrom (JWN).
On a better note, Ambarella (AMBA) and Nutanix (NTNX) are up nicely in the wake of their reports.
Treasury yields were lower in front of a huge batch of economic data at 8:30 a.m. ET. They have stayed lower, too, following the releases. The 2-yr note yield is down four basis points to 4.21% and the 10-yr note yield is down five basis points to 4.25%.
- Initial jobless claims for the week ending November 23 decreased by 2,000 to 213,000 (Briefing.com consensus 217,000). Continuing jobless claims for the week ending November 16 increased by 9,000 to 1.907 million.
- The key takeaway from the report is the much the same: employers are reluctant to let employees go, but for employees let go it is becoming more challenging to find a new job.
- Durable goods orders increased 0.2% month-over-month in October (Briefing.com consensus 0.4%) following an upwardly revised 0.4% decline (from -0.8%). Excluding transportation, durable goods orders increased 0.1% month-over-month following an unrevised 0.4% increase in September.
- The key takeaway from the report is that it showed some softness in business spending in October, evidenced by a 0.2% decline in new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft -- a proxy for business spending.
- The second estimate for Q3 GDP was 2.8% (Briefing.com consensus 2.8%), unchanged from the advance estimate. The second estimate for the GDP Deflator was 1.9% (Briefing.com consensus 1.8%), up slightly from the advance estimate of 1.8%.
- The key takeaway from the report is that there was a modest downward revision to personal consumption expenditures, yet that did not alter the fact that personal spending was quite healthy in the third quarter.
- The Adv. International Trade in Goods deficit narrowed to $99.1 billion in October versus a downwardly revised $108.7 billion (from $108.2 billion) in September. Advance Retail Inventories increased 0.1% following a downwardly revised 0.6% increase (from 0.8%) in September and Advance Wholesale Inventories jumped 0.2% in October following a downwardly revised 0.2% decline (from -0.1%) in September.
- The key takeaway from the report is that there was a notable month-over-month decline for both exports of goods (-$5.6 billion) and imports of goods (-$15.2 billion) that was likely adversely impacted by the East Coast port strike.
The Treasury market and the equity futures market took the economic news in stride and will await the release of the October Personal Income and Spending Report at 10:00 a.m. ET. That will include the PCE Price Index and core-PCE Price Index, which are the Fed's preferred inflation gauges.
The S&P 500 futures are down two points and are trading fractionally below fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are down 41 points and are trading 0.2% below fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are up 62 points and are trading 0.1% above fair value, setting the stage for a mixed and flattish open.
